Galdur is the art of singing the runes to activate them. This is a form of runic magic. Not being a Nordic reconstructionist, my interest in the occult began with finding a tarot deck. Maybe being an artist allows me to fabricate from abstractions, symbols, and random things. Sometimes when I enter the creative stream, I start by imagining a first step into a current of unconsciousness. This river coexists with us in the astral realms outside the atmosphere, somewhere on the color spectrum that the human eye can’t see. This creative energy often appears to me as a translucent blue liquid starlight. Writing about this subject makes me think about a shift inside my mind, a muscle moving in the center of my head, that I have felt before. Everyone has a third eye. Completing the FOI’s magi path work introduced this sensation when I studied how to see auras.

About seven or eight years ago, I visited the local metaphysical shop and bought my first set of runes. Being deity-centric in my practices, I offered them to Odin, as he is the God who pulled the runes forth from the roots of Yggdrasil, the Great World Tree. I always imagine the tree roots running deep into the earth and out the other side, through the hands of the three Norns. The Wyrd is the Nordic concept of fate, or destiny, like a giant cosmic spider web that blankets the universe.

I often picture the runes like letters on a keyboard, but they resemble frayed string edges instead of a computer keyboard. This is an abstract understanding that the ends of these threads are where they can be accessed, pulled, felt, and manipulated. I now treat each rune in similar reciprocity as I do each deity. Or any of the kindred, for that matter. This reverence for the runes themselves stems from my first experience when I got home that day. After gently shaking the small burlap bag, I pulled out my first, which was goldstone. According to the little plastic insert, the engraving was Uruz. I closed my eyes to meditate on the object and felt compelled to sing its name, each syllable emphasized in different tones and notes.

In my mind, I was transported to a vast plateau overlooking a deep green vale. A single room dwelling appeared near the cliff’s edge, overlooking distant mountains and capped by a gray sky. Cold northern winds hissed through the grass bordering the structure’s foundation. The location was secure with an advantage. There was a sort of sleepiness to the slumping wood beams supporting its turf roof. Various layers of green grass helped hide the structure’s shape from a distance. Generations of use had not weakened its walls. Smaller than a traditional Viking longhouse, its expert craftsmanship was apparent.

Mist dampened the outside world. A heavy front door, not locked, kept smoky warmth inside. To the right, a small fire pit heated a pot that smelled of onion. A man worked at a table in the firelight, his back to the door. Smoke attempted to escape through a crude hole in the roof that did little to clear the air. Against the back wall and scattered all about the floor, blankets of furs sprawled about in a large circle around a sleeping infant. A woman was kneeling at a low bench on the other side of the single-room home.

Lining the walls were various ancestral objects, weapons, and symbols displayed in the flickering light—relics of a people on the edge of genocide. The new God had no tolerance for the Northerners’ old beliefs. No space for the memories of their ancestors that flowed through their veins, and the stone of the homes they buried in soot. The mother and father had chosen to hide far away from the politics and invaders. They knew the day would come that they would be found, especially once the child began to cry. There were no paths, no land markers for miles in any direction. Only their clan should have been able to find the place; it was often used as a birthing home of their ancestors. Then the day came. There was a loud knock on a wooden beam near the door.

The sound was not made by hand but by the metal of military weaponry. Three men burst through the door, each armored in chainmail covered with a dirtied surcoat. These soldiers were hungry and dangerous. Two attacked the man first.  

Assuming Northern women were submissive, like the ones they found lurking in their taverns, the third soldier stood grinning at the woman. Her gaze held him stunned. He swayed with a knife, toying with the blade’s tip in his fingers. Then the baby screamed, and it all happened so fast.

Distracted, the man with the knife turned his head, exposing the side of his neck. With the skill that all clan children learned in youth, she threw a small axe that sliced across his exposed flesh. The silver weapon landed in the furs. His body sagged onto the soft floor. Silently, she removed a long staff from hooks built into the underside of the bed. She pierced through the second soldier’s rusty chainmail from behind his ribs, into his heart. It was too late for her husband. He lay cradled in the arms of the third soldier.

They should have been brethren, skin darkened after years in the sun. Unconscious from drinking after a battle they fought as comrades. Instead, their last embrace was that of an enemy.

A guttural moan escaped from the woman’s lungs, and birds lamented from the distance in reply. Through tears, gasping for breath, she grabbed the shrieking baby into a bundle and fastened linens around her torso to carry the extra load. Gathering what little food and gear she could, she set fire to the last of their mother’s ancestral homes. Any evidence of their survival would need to be destroyed. The sight of the fire silenced the little one.  

The invading king sought to exterminate those he deemed did not belong. After some time, she would learn new ways and survive the changing world. She promised this to her daughter and the flames. She swore to Óðni that her bloodline, her people’s way, would live on after her kin’s tongues were taken and the stories of old no longer told.

She ran as far as her legs could carry the two of them. One day, she made her way to a town. She learned not to speak or have an opinion, not to make eye contact, and to disappear into the shadows. Her life was gone before her daughter would have children of her own, but the seed was planted, and the spirit of blood never dies.