NAVIGATION

SIGDRIFUMAL

Her name was Sigrdrifa, meaning Victory-Granter, and she was a Valkyrie. She said that two kings had fought. One was named Helm Gunnar; he had grown old but was still the greatest warriors, and to him Othinn had decreed victory. The other Agnar, Hauda's brother, who never had hopes of being favoured. Victory-Granter felled Helm Gunnar in battle. In revenge Othinn pricked her with a sleep thorn and said that she should never there-after fight for victory but should be married. But, she said him, I in my turn bind myself by a vow to marry no man except one who knows no fear. Sigurd asked her to make her wisdom known to him, since she had knowledge of all the worlds, Sigrdrifa said :
 

             Germania by F. A. von Kaulbach

Sigidrifa´s prayer from the Sigidrifumál

2. "Hail, day! Hail, sons of day!
And night and her daughter now!
Look on us here with loving eyes,
That waiting we victory win

3. "Hail to the gods! Ye goddesses, hail,
And all the generous earth!
Give to us wisdom and goodly speech,
And healing hands, life-long.

4. "Long did I sleep, my slumber was long,
And long are the grief's of life;
Othinn decreed that I could not break
The heavy spells of sleep."

5. "Beer I bring thee, tree of battle,
Mingled of strength and mighty fame;
Charms it holds and healing signs,
Spells full good, and gladness-runes."

6. Winning-runes learn, if thou longest to win,
And the runes on thy sword-hilt write;
Some on the furrow, and some on the flat,
And twice shalt thou call on Tyr.

7. Ale-runes learn, that with lies the wife
Of another betray not thy trust;                                                                                       On the horn thou shalt write, and the backs of thy hands,
And Need shalt mark on thy nails.
Thou shalt bless the draught, and danger escape,
And cast a leek in the cup;
(For so I know thou never shalt see Thy mead with evil mixed.)

8. Birth-runes learn, if help thou wilt lend,
The babe from the mother to bring;
On thy palms shalt write them, and round thy joints,
And ask the fates to aid.

9. Wave-runes learn, if well thou wouldst shelter
The sail-steeds out on the sea;
On the stem shalt thou write, and the steering blade,
And burn them into the oars;
Though high be the breakers, and black the waves,
Thou shalt safe the harbour seek.

10. Branch-runes learn, if a healer wouldst be,
And cure for wounds wouldst work;                                                                                   On the bark shalt thou write, and on trees that be
With boughs to the eastward bent.

11. Speech-runes learn, that none may seek
To answer harm with hate;
Well he winds and weaves them all,
And sets them side by side,
At the judgment-place, when justice there
The folk shall fairly win.

12. Thought-runes learn, if all shall think
Thou art keenest minded of men.

13. Them Hropt arranged, and them he wrote,
And them in thought he made,                                                                          Out of the draught that down had dropped
From the head of Heithdraupnir,
And the horn of Hoddrofnir.

14. On the mountain he stood with Brimir's sword,
On his head the helm he bore;
Then first the head of Mim spoke forth,
And words of truth it told.

15. He bade write on the shield | before the shining goddess,
On Arvak's ear, and on Alsvith's hoof,
On the wheel of the car of Hrungnir's killer,
On Sleipnir's teeth, and the straps of the sledge.

17. On glass and on gold, and on goodly charms,
In wine and in beer, and on well-loved seats,
On Gungnir's point, and on Grani's breast,
On the nails of Norns, and the night-owl's beak.

16. On the paws of the bear, and on Bragi's tongue                                             On the wolf's claws bared, and the eagle's beak,
On bloody wings, and bridge's end,
On freeing hands and helping foot-prints

17. On glass and on gold, and on goodly charms,
In wine and in beer, and on well-loved seats,
On Gungnir's point, and on Grani's breast,
On the nails of Norns, and the night-owl's beak.

18. Shaved off were the runes that of old were written,
And mixed with the holy mead,
And sent on ways so wide;
So the gods had them, so the elves got them,
And some for the Wanes so wise,
And some for mortal men.

19. Beech-runes are there, birth-runes are there,
And all the runes of ale,                                                                                     And the magic runes of might;
Who knows them rightly and reads them true,
Has them himself to help;
Ever they aid,
Till the gods are gone.

Ref: Bellows, HA (1991) The Poetic Edda, Sigrdrifumol pgs 295-297, stz 2-19

In the Sigdrifumal, a portion of the Elder Edda, there is a list of the types of runes one should know:

Gamanrúna - Game runes, (having to do with songs)
Sigrúnar - Victory runes (for warfare)
Ölrúnar - Ale runes (against poison)
Bjargrúnar - Birth runes (to aid in childbirth)
Brimrúnar - Sea runes (for luck in sailing)
Limrúnar - Limb runes (for healers)
Málrúnar - Speech runes (for help in courts of law)
Hugrúnar - Thought runes (for wisdom)
Bókrúnar - Beech runes (Book Runes),

The word book is derived from an old Germanic word bōks which means 'beech' - as the only writing the ancient Germans knew was done on rune-sticks made from beech, they simply transferred the word when 'real books' as we know them came in. Buchstabe based on the above bōks and stabi, a 'stick' - again referring to the above rune-sticks, this word has been transferred to mean a letter of the alphabet.

Lastly Mætar meginrúnar - Mighty magic runes (actually the Power Runes).

Rune Sticks
The act of writing poetry on rune sticks is also recorded in Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar (chap LXII) of the hero Grettir and the half-giant Hallmund rthis last, like Egill, dictates his poem to his daughter who records it on a rune stick!

The Valkyrie Sigrdrifa addresses Sigurd Fafnesbani with these words after he has wakened her from her sleep on Hindarfjell. Sigrdrifa is better known under another name, Brynhild, and her magic sleep was a punishment of Othinn, her father according to the prose version of the story. She had disobeyed her father’s will and he stung her with a magical thorn, which made her sleep. Othinn put a shield-wall around her and stated that no one who was acquainted with fear could pass this and wake her up. Sigurd Fafnisbani heard this story from the deadly wounded dragon and headed towards Hindarfjel for the maiden. His meeting with the valkyrie is told in Sigrdrífumál, belonging to the Eddic poems and the cycle of the Völsungar.  

After that she invokes the gods and the mighty fecund earth and beseeches them of “eloquence and native wit and healing hands”, not only for herself but also for Sigurd, the one who never was acquainted with fear and whom she now is expecting to marry. The healing hands are completed with knowledge of magical power, spells and favourable letters, good charms and joyful runes. Sigrdrifa furthermore tells that the runes should be cut on the hands and marked on the nails in order to beguile a wife. Others were victory-runes cut on the sword, others to calm the sea; there were speech-runes, mind-runes and book-runes, which at the first glance would have very little to do with healing. Others are more accurate to this connection, like the helping-runes in childbirth:

The powerful runes of Sigrdrifa are an expression of the letter as holy in itself. The very word rúna meant “secret” and the letters were thought as originating from the gods to special persons, who were said to rá›a rúnom “to rule and to master the secret letters). The word rá›a thus implies a special knowledge, which means that the runes had to be understood by the magician or the healer. One famous example of this occurs in Egils saga Skalla-grimsonar. Egil Skalla-Grimson is visiting a peasant in Edskog in Sweden, who worries for his sick daughter Helga. She suffers from an unknown illness, never sleeps and seems to have lost her wits. Egil asks the peasant what they had done to cure her and gets the answer that a young man had carved runes in order to cure her, but this made it even worse. He investigates the bed and finds whalebone with runes under it. He reads them and cuts them away and burns the bone. Then he makes a poem about this event.

They should be marked at the nails as protection and were obviously connected with the norns, something still existing in folk belief as practised by the Wolwas of old, where small white dots under the nails are called “marks of the norns”. The norns were a third group of collective elder goddesses, connected with fate and the borders of life and death. Their appearance at childbirth is noticed in The Lay of Fafnir in a stanza, usually translated as “those who choose children from the mothers”. The literal translation says, however, that “they choose the mothers from their sons”, which must be interpreted as meaning that they could appear as death goddesses for the women. This stanza is usually translated as meaning who should survive or not. If mother and child survived, they received a sacrifice of porridge called norne-grautar, something that resisted the change of religions for many centuries. The disir and the norns were thus deities invoked in spells and through runic magic; still the art of healing had to be learnt. The interaction between healing and magic is conspicuous, but not as the distinction made by Frazer where magic was a means to subdue even the divine. The gods, who ultimately decided fate of man, gave the healing hands and the magic galdr.

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