Revival of the Runes: The Modern Rediscovery and Reinvention of the Germanic Runes - Stephen E. Flowers Ph.D. 2021

Romanticism

(1800—1880)

The Age of Reason, with its promises of a rapidly perfected world based on the application of logic and rational problem-solving in a progressive manner, demonstrated its historical weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the throes of the excesses of the French Revolution. Long before that, however, many members of a younger generation had questioned the theoretical basis of Enlightenment thinking. It had ignored the particular in favor of the universal, the national in favor of the international. The revolution in the history of ideas that challenged the Enlightenment came to be called Romanticism.

Even before the broader Romantic movement had begun, in many parts of the Germanic world there were signs of disaffection with the Enlightenment approach to intellectual and artistic life. This was evident, for example, in German literary movements such as the Sentimentalist school influenced by Pietism and mysticism from 1740 to 1780, and Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) during the years 1767 to 1785.

The Romantic movement as such is thought to have run its course in mainstream culture by 1848, a year when there were general uprisings all over Europe in favor of national revolutions. These uprisings were generally suppressed by the monarchal powers, and the Romantic spirit became more of a matter of individual sensibility and of subcultural artistic expressions. Certainly, the basic ideas of Romanticism did not go away and remain as vibrant today as ever.

The importance of the Romantic impulse to runic study was this: scholars began to be more and more interested in national traditions, local phenomena, and organic and biological realities. This led attention increasingly away from things that made all peoples the same, and more and more toward those things that distinguished them one from the other. It was the unique, the individual, the national, and the natural that would become ever more compelling. The particular and peculiar art, literature, and even writing exemplified by the ancestors of the Germans, English, and Scandinavians at least became a topic of fascination and curiosity. But it would not be until the end of this period that enough data had been gathered, and the requisite methods made available, that would enable seekers to discover the real truth about the runes, their origins, and their true nature.

The late 1700s had been a period of especially widespread disinterest in Germanic antiquities, even in Sweden. There we find an overreaction to the excesses of Gothicism as expressed by men such as Rudbeck and Göransson. But the Romantic Age ushered in a new interest in the Germanic past, and one that was more a part of the artistic world as well as being relatively better informed with regard to history and linguistics. In Sweden this found expression in the organizations called the Götiska Förbund (Gothic Society), formed in 1811, and the Manhemsförbund (Manheim’s Society), formed in 1815. Manhem is a term that harkened back to Rudbeck’s work and signified the “world of men,” the original golden age of humanity. The leaders of these Swedish societies were shaped by the ideals of Romanticism stemming from Germany at the time and by their own interests in renewing a patriotic sensibility. One of the leading lights of this movement was the poet, musician, and investigator Erik Gustaf Geijer (1783—1847), who wrote an influential chapter concerning runes in his work Svea rikes häfder (The Traditions of the Swedish Kingdom) in 1825. The historian Nils Henrik Sjöberg (1767—1838) of the University of Lund also reawakened general interest in the runes with his three-volume study Samlingar för nordens fornälskare (Collections for Aficionados of the North) published between 1822 and 1830.

The neo-Gothic movement in Sweden during the Romantic period was not principally focused on runic material, so I will have little more to say about it here. (However, it is a major focus of volume two of The Northern Dawn, my study of the greater Germanic revival from the Early Modern period to the present.)

A more exacting and scientific approach to the study of language emerged in the early part of the nineteenth century in conjunction with the spirit of Romanticism. Because of increased interest in indigenous culture, and due to the fact that so little had been preserved—and even less cultivated—with regard to the ancient Germanic past, ever more precise theories and intellectual tools had to be developed to uncover the long-buried truth of these matters. The process would not be quick, nor would it be easy. It would be fraught with many missteps and often beset by false assumptions. Nevertheless, it is in this period when the methods that would lead to a more perfect runic revival would begin to be developed.

Linguistic science made great leaps over the course of the nineteenth century. This was mainly due to the work of historical linguists of Germany and Denmark—for example, Rasmus Rask (1787—1832), Franz Bopp (1791—1867), Jacob Grimm (1785—1863), August Schleicher (1821—1868), and Johannes Schmidt (1843—1901). These scholars were able to show the relationship of the Germanic languages to one another and to contextualize them in the historical development of the greater family of Indo-European languages to which they belong. It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that this linguistic science was sufficiently developed and established to begin to have a significant influence on the course of runic studies.

The rapid progress that took place in the field of linguistics found its way into runology much more slowly and with various degrees of success. In part this situation was exacerbated by the paucity of research material relating to runes and the lack of suitable scientific collections of runic texts that would enable linguistic scholars to pursue their work. Written sources, such as those in Old Norse literature, the Gothic Bible (written in the Gothic language of the fourth century), Old English literature, Old Saxon literature (such as the Heliand), and Old High German literature formed a large corpus of information, upon which serious scholars could toil away in their efforts to unlock the essence of ancient Germanic culture. By contrast, the runes were more difficult to gain similar access to at the time. The resolution of this enormous problem would not even be under way until the beginning of the twentieth century, when the great editions of the various bodies of runic inscriptions began to be edited and published.

A persistent misunderstanding was that the runes of the Younger Futhark were older than those of the twenty-four-rune system. This was undoubtedly due to the overwhelming number of inscriptions in the simpler system, which made the few inscriptions in the other system appear to be a decadent variant. However, the application of the growing knowledge concerning the languages in which these inscriptions appear would eventually make the picture clear. The even more comprehensive body of knowledge that was being amassed concerning the discovery and growing awareness of the truth about the Indo-European context of indigenous European culture and language would also aid greatly in this process.

The most important figure in the scientific field of runology since the days of Bureus and Wormius is that of Wilhelm Carl Grimm (1786—1859), who published a landmark study, Ueber deutsche Runen (On German Runes), in 1821. Wilhelm and his brother Jacob were, of course, pioneering figures in many fields, ranging from linguistics to mythology, folklore, and the history of the law and legal concepts. A year after Grimm’s work appeared, the Dane Jakob Hornemann Bredsdorff would be the first to establish that the twenty-four-rune futhark was, in fact, the older of the two systems. During the middle part of the nineteenth century, several linguists worked on specific problems surrounding the runic systems and the correct reading of them in a basic way. Because the Older Futhark was more ancient, rarer in the record, and contained many puzzles relevant to the development of Germanic language at an archaic level, the study of them became increasingly interesting to all concerned.

Johan Gustaf Liljegren (1791—1837) published works under the title Run-Lära (Runology) (1832), which was a landmark work in the scientific study of the runes, and in 1833 his companion volume, Run-Urkunder (Rune-Records), appeared. The latter work contained illustrations and transliterations of only three thousand of the inscriptions.

A work that seems to represent a potential link between pre-Romantic and modern esoteric runology is the two-volume study published in 1856 and 1859 titled Die Urreligion, oder das endeckte Uralphabet (The Primordial Religion, or the Primordial Ancient Alphabet) by the Catholic bishop to Sweden, Jakob Laurents Studach (1796—1873). He was also a translator of the Poetic Edda (1829). In his Urreligion volumes, Studach forms all sorts of connections between Germanic and other mythic and magical symbolic and alphabetic systems, including the Egyptian and the Greek, as well as astrological lore. In the second volume of his Urreligion study, which is titled “Das Pentalpha des Runenalphabets” (The Pentalpha of the Rune Alphabet), an outline of his basic runology is given on pages viii—ix. I will provide a translation of this here, and the reader can make the connections between Bure and List, as well as others. Studach’s Catholicism may have affected some of his peculiar associations in the text.

Appearing virtually at the same time as Studach’s work was one by Franz Joseph Lauth (1822—1895) titled Das germanische Runen-Fudark, aus den Quellen kritisch erschlossen und nebst einigen Denkmälern zum ersten Male erklärt (The Germanic Rune-Fudark, Critically Revealed from the Sources and Explained alongside Some [Related] Monuments; 1857). Lauth was also an early practitioner of Egyptology when that discipline was fairly new. His particular obsession appears to have been the calculation of time using the runes as a guide.

Despite the advances in linguistic science—or, it appears, in some cases because of those advances—the idea that the runes actually had their genesis in the North and among the Germanic peoples, or that they sprang from a root common to all alphabets independently, persisted up to the middle of the nineteenth century. Scholars such as Gisli Brynjulfsen, W. Weingärtner, and F. Dietrich supported this idea, and Brynjulfsen stated that they had their origin among the “Gotho-Caucasian tribe.” Apparently, the logic went, if the languages of the Germanic peoples have an ancient link to the Indo-Germanic heritage, so too must their ancient writing system. The fallacy of this should be obvious, but it stems from the lack of understanding of the essentially oral character not only of early Germanic culture but also that of the Indo-Europeans of the East.

When we look out over the whole sweep of the Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century in the Germanic countries (and at this time the United States could still be counted among these), we see a variegated picture with regard to the place of runes in this phenomenon. In general, it must be said that their role had become minimal. We see that runic symbolism had remained strong in Sweden for a very long time, especially under the sponsorship of the Gothicism of Rudbeck and Göransson, but elsewhere in Scandinavia they had slipped from the public’s attention; in England (and America) runes had become the purview of dilettantes and eccentrics; while in Germany runes had remained largely unknown until the work of Wilhelm Grimm.

By the 1870s, however, the German world had been introduced to the runes at the level of “popular culture” in the form of Richard Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerke (total works of art) otherwise known as “operas.” In the Ring of the Nibelungen cycle of four such works, we see how Wagner used the concept of the runes as important symbols in his own personal and philosophical recasting of Germanic heroic mythology. The ring itself is said to be worked with runes, and the shaft of Wotan’s spear is described as having runes inscribed on it. Runes, and the concept of runes as a method of conveying magical power, are deeply imbedded in Wagner’s artistic worldview. It is from this time forward that the runes begin to gain a new attention in the German-speaking world and beyond. This is largely because Wagner’s work was influential in many parts of Europe and the world.

In a forthcoming study titled Wagner’s Ring and the Germanic Tradition, the philosopher Collin Cleary has recently reviewed the idea of the runes in Wagner’s Ring.

[W]e may note that there are numerous references to the runes in Der Ring des Nibelungen, where the term has the same variety of meanings it does in the Scandinavian sources. At times, it simply seems to mean letters or signs. For example, in Scene Two of Das Rheingold Fasolt reminds Wotan of the “runes (Runen) (Runenzauber) makes a ring from the gold.” In the Prologue of Götterdämmerung, Brünnhilde says to Siegfried “I gave to you a bountiful store of hallowed runes (heiliger Runen).” And Siegfried says to her “in return for all your runes I hand this ring to you.”

Clearly, Wagner had some ideas of his own concerning the symbolic and conceptual significance of the runes in Germanic lore. Wagner was a visionary in his own right, and the vision of art as a transformative agent in cultural revolution was the motivating factor in his work. The runes were brought into the consciousness of the Western world on a new level by Wagner’s subtle inclusion of them on key symbols in his narrative. The golden ring of the Nibelungen appears to have been fashioned under the magical influence of the runes. The ring is a symbol of love and the cosmic power it wields—not only through the renunciation of love but also through giving love, receiving it, and withholding it from others. The other symbol upon which Wagner inscribes runes is Wotan’s spear, a record of the god’s binding contractual oaths involving the cosmos and other beings within it. The spear is a legal scepter of sovereign power. Wagner’s use of these symbols prefigures both Freud and Jung.

Toward the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the world, and especially Europe and the United States, was beginning to engage in what would be called the Second Industrial Revolution. The technological, economic, and concomitant cultural changes this brought about would have wide-ranging repercussions on society at large and would be felt in the intellectual world in which the runic revival was taking place. On the one hand, scientific clarity was increasing, but on the other hand, there was a significant nostalgic reaction to the rapid and often ugly changes being wrought in society. Especially in Germany this would give rise to what came to be called the Reformbewegungen—the Reform Movements.