A while ago, I was doing a post in which I needed to know how runes were cast and read in ancient times. I wasn't sure where to start, or which techniques were "authentic". So, I contacted the Viking Answer Lady and this is what she sent:

The real asnwer is "we haven't any idea how they were used".

The Viking Age runes, or Younger Futhar, do use 16 runes -- but they vary. Most New Age books on rune use the Elder Futhark, which is older and which has a full 24 runes.

We know that even very early runes were being used for some sorts of divination, but also used on items for properties which the Norse believed were magically inherent in the rune symbols themselves.

The earliest account (and one of the most complete) which describe how runic divination was done was recorded by P. Cornelius Tacitus, ca. 100 AD (i.e., six hundred years before the Viking Age):

Auspicia sortesque ut qui maxime observant: sortium consuetudo simplex. Virgam frugiferae arbori decisam in surculos amputant eosque notis quibusdam discretos super candidam vestem temere ac fortuito spargunt. Mox, si publice consultetur, sacerdos civitatis, sin privatim, ipse pater familiae, precatus deos caelumque suspiciens ter singulos tollit, sublatos secundum impressam ante notam interpretatur. Si prohibuerunt, nulla de eadem re in eundem diem consultatio; sin permissum, auspiciorum adhuc fides exigitur.

Auguries and Method of Divination. Augury and divination by lot no people practise more diligently. The use of the lots is simple. A little bough is lopped off a fruit-bearing tree, and cut into small pieces; these are distinguished by certain marks, and thrown carelessly and at random over a white garment. In public questions the priest of the particular state, in private the father of the family, invokes the gods, and, with his eyes toward heaven, takes up each piece three times, and finds in them a meaning according to the mark previously impressed on them. If they prove unfavourable, there is no further consultation that day about the matter; if they sanction it, the confirmation of augury is still required.

The only other indication we have of how the runes were used in divination comes from the various Rune Poems, which suggest the meanings associated with given runes. You can learn more about these poems from:

Bruce Dickins. Runic and Heroic Poems of the Old Teutonic Peoples. Cambridge. 1915.

The Rune Poems http://members.aol.com/cbsunny/rune_poems.html

The best reconstruction I've seen of rune-reading has involved fruitwood twigs, each marked with a single rune. The aetts (three groupings of the runes, originally 8 runes each in the Elder Futhark) are each dyes a different color -- one aett was dyed green, one red, the last left undyed or white. Then the questioner thought of their question, and took one aett at a time, and rolled the bundle in their hands then cast them on a white cloth. Usually only one was read, that one being the one nearest the center, or if a small grouping fell touching one another in the center, then the group was read as affecting one another. The Norwegian lady who was doing these readings read the first set as "the past", the second aett as "the present", and the third as "the future", having the questioner repeat the casting in turn with each of the three aetts. Finally, the questioner was given the whole set of twigs, shuffled them in the hands, then cast those, and one rune was read as a "overall" or summation.

This may have nothing at all to do with how the Norse or Germanic peoples used the runes for divination at all. The modern technique relies on the Rune Poems for meanings, and on Tacitus for the form of the procedure, but we have no Viking Age documentation for it at all. The technique described above has clear links to the Tarot tradition, which is of course utterly unrelated.

::GUNNORA::