We, the descendants of Northern European peoples, have a unique, common heritage. Our ancestors inhabited of the Scandinavian isles, particularly Gotland; by 400 AD, most of them had sailed across the Baltic Sea and descended into Central Europe, venturing as far south as the Black Sea. Everywhere they went, they took their culture with them, including the runes.
The runes are a series of symbolic inscriptions; forged to capture the natural and mysterious forces of the universe, they provide a portal into the unique world of the ancient people who designed them.
The original rune sequence consists of twenty-four runes divided into three rows of eight runes each. Each rune has a special place within the sequence. But there is some debate over the order of the last two runes, Dagaz and Othala (also known as Othila, Odal, respectively). This is particularly interesting: whereas the first 8 runes speak of the world's creative forces and the next 8 about world-altering forces, the last 8 runes tell the tale of our Volk, the Gotland-descended peoples, and the order of the last two runes changes the entire ending of the tale.
- The Othala rune represents our people, heritage, rite, homeland and inherited blood-affinity.
- The Dagaz rune represents the concept of slowly-progressive change. We see this force daily (as the day gives way to the night), quarterly (with the seasons) and yearly (as one year ends and a new one begins), etc.
Interpretation 1:
| Othala Dagaz |
Arguably, if the symbol of change, Dagaz, comes after the symbol of our people, Othala, (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) and thus closes out the rune sequence, then it seems likely that the story of our people is destined to end as that great change, represented in Dagaz, descends upon us.
This interpretation is compatible with what old Germanic mythology tells us about Ragnarök, the climactic "endtimes" envisioned by our pagan, rune-reading ancestors. According to the legend, Ragnarök will mark a time of great peril for our people, during which our very existence will be jeopardized. Well, think about the current crisis, where there are signs that our people could be approaching their end: internationalism and Islamification both threaten to uproot and displace our ethnic communities as foreign ideas grow up in their place. Meanwhile, many of our own have turned to backward ways (crime, drugs, etc.) in the current era, and our real ethnic cultures have been replaced with a monolithic, materialistic mass-idiot culture where many of our people don’t give a damn about where they come from or what their ancestors warned of; furthermore, our people are not having enough children to stay above the rate of population sustainability (two children per every two adults) and the family unit/household is being destroyed. If all of these trends continue, so will our gradual and irreversible destruction.
Interpretation 2:
| Dagaz Othala |
The other possibility is that the symbol of our people, Othala, comes after the Dagaz rune (1,2,3,4,5,6,8, 9,10), prophesying that there is survival and rebirth to close out the sequence and follow the great period of transformation.
Under such circumstances, one could argue that our people, represented by the Othala rune, are destined to spring back and be what comes after the catastrophe foretold in Dagaz. Legend holds that a rebirth will follow the crises of Ragnarök. As such, this new beginning would be an era in which the life, strength and the spirit of our people lives on.
So which will it be, rebirth or destruction? In how we elect to deal with the current crises, I believe the choice is ours entirely. Perhaps that is what our ancestors were trying to tell us all along - and the official order of the last two runes cannot be determined from research alone because there never was an official order.
