This rune-relationship project has taken longer than I thought: a whole fucking year, and I'm not halfway through. I stumbled when I lost my joy (Wunjo) and had to create it again; then I got hung up on Hagalaz and it took a natural event to shake me out of my stagnation.
So here, this is what Hagalaz means.
#OldNorse #futhark #runes
https://gygratru.neocities.org/runes/09hagalaz
I asked for a cold and snowy winter, the giantess gave me a winter of biting cold, drifts of snow, and a frozen lake. I asked for a couple additional days of this, she granted them.
Recently I thought to myself, it's about time for me to write about Hagalaz, I could use some hail.
See what the giantess has given me today. She holds me in her hands, and I am hers.
#OldNorse #runes #futhark #giantess
I think one of the strengths of #OldNorse is how people form personal relationships with it today, and I think that's because even the source material is just reconstruction and memory. There's no definitive word, only the collective voice of disparate communities.
That gives people plenty of room to find what connects and make the rest fit. There's no "true path" and there's no one who can authoritatively correct you, however you want to take it.
I lifted a rotted tree trunk on Instagram and uncovered a swarm of pallid maggots and creepy-crawlies: white supremacists hiding behind Norse myth … and aliens. I reported specific posts and accounts to IG, but you know they don't care about that stuff.
But I thought it was time I installed an anti-fascist statement on Gýgratrú, along with some page revisions. I'm fucking disgusted with extremists corrupting #OldNorse.
https://gygratru.neocities.org/position
This is an experiment. I wanted to see what ChatGPT is capable of, so I greeted it in #OldNorse … and it responded in kind.
The pronunciation is almost entirely correct. I'm guessing they're using an Icelandic speaker. I ran the text through a rune translator to set it in Younger #Futhark, then cleaned it up according to what few grammatical rules I know.
I'll probably take this down today. I'm a little blown away by this.
from the album Ragnarök
A brief encounter told in #OldNorse. This is my best attempt at reconstructed pronunciation.
Maðr - the TH is vocalized, so it sounds like "mother." Same with við and niðr.
Gýgju/gýgjar - the ý is pronounced like the German Ü, OO at the lips and EE over the tongue.
Hjá - the á is pronounced like the Minnesotan OA sound.
Tracking words in #OldNorse that are familiar to me for one reason or another.
– Lesa (read), German lesen
– Salt, unchanged in English
– Sundr (asunder)
– Mat (food), unchanged from Norwegian
– Kveld (evening), unchanged from Norwegian
– Ek heiti (my name is), German ich heiße
Rúnskrá