There are texts that belong to the past, and then there are texts that refuse to fall silent. The rune inscriptions from the Nordic lands are of the latter kind. They are carved into stone, wood, bone and metal, and they carry with them a world in which words did not merely describe reality, but took part in it. For those who live with a pagan spirit, this is not a foreign thought but a recognisable experience: that language can be more than information, that it can be connection, rhythm, power and memory.
In the Old Norse world, seiðr was not a peripheral phenomenon, but part of what bound together people, nature, fate and divine presence. It could be protection, healing, curse, insight and prophecy. It could act within the body, in the landscape, in society and in the unseen layers of life. It is precisely this multiplicity that makes it difficult to press seiðr into modern, convoluted definitions. At the same time, it is this very multiplicity that makes it so alive for us today.
Words that act
In the modern world, writing is often treated as something fixed and neutral. But in the old inscriptions, writing is anything but neutral. It can warn, protect, threaten and help. A rune inscription can be an act in itself, not merely testimony to an act. When someone carved a curse, it was not simply to declare their anger; it was to set a force in motion. When someone wrote a healing formula, it was not merely a prayer in aesthetic form, but a concrete appeal to the powers that could intervene.
This is a crucial point for all who today feel kinship with pre-Christian or nature-based traditions: people of the past did not necessarily think in our categories, but they lived in a world that was also relational, permeated with signs and presence. The rune inscriptions do not only show us something about history; they show us something about how human beings can experience the world when it is not reduced to the measurable alone.
The gravity of the curse
Some of the most famous inscriptions bear the mark of darker language. Here we find warnings that remind us the words could be sharp as a blade. The curses are not simple outbursts of anger. They are formulated boundaries, set with intent and authority. In practice they say: this place, this stone, this act is not open to just anyone.
With a pagan worldview, it is easy to recognise something fundamental here. The sacred boundary is not merely symbolic; it is active. It protects, it repels, it maintains order. The curse is therefore not only destructive but also order-creating. It makes clear that the relationship between human and power must be handled with care. The rune inscriptions from Björketorp, Glavendrup and other sites show exactly this: a world in which the sacred was not gentle and diffuse, but potent and demanding.
Healing and craft
At the same time, it is in the healing inscriptions that many readers today will feel the strongest connection. Here the tone is different. Here one asks for help, for good forces, for something damaged to be made whole. In the Hemdrup staff and the Ribe staff we encounter language that binds together hand, voice, prayer and effect. The one who heals does more than observe; they act with intention.
It is especially moving how these texts speak of the body. Illness appears almost as an intruder, something that penetrates through the body's openings and must be driven away. This is an image many will still recognise in ritual practice, folk medicine and modern energy traditions. It makes the inscriptions relevant even today, not because they can be directly copied, but because they express an enduring human experience: that health is not merely mechanics, but balance, protection and connection.
The Ribe staff is especially interesting because it unites Christian and older expressions within the same textual space. This shows not a clean break between worlds, but a historical overlap. For our readers, this may serve as a reminder that old currents rarely disappear entirely; they are reinterpreted, adapted and sometimes concealed in new forms.
The doorway of prophecy
Prophecy is perhaps the most fascinating part of this entire field. The Old Norse world does not seem to have perceived the future as an empty space. Rather, it appears as a landscape that already cast shadows towards those who lived within it. In such inscriptions, time becomes not linear but layered. The memory of the past and the warning of the future are bound together.
The Rök stone is the clearest example of this. It is enigmatic, poetic and full of layers. It invites not merely reading but participation. Whoever encounters it must listen, interpret and sense. There is something deeply ritual about it. Not because everything must be "explained" by a single solution, but because the text's power lies precisely in its opening up of multiple spaces of meaning. For anyone familiar with modern paganism, this is highly recognisable: symbols often work because they are not exhausted by a single interpretation.
The Malt stone also stands in this borderland between riddle and omen. It contains forms, words and patterns that make the text unusual and ambiguous. Thus it becomes an example of an older practice where mystery was not a problem to be solved away, but part of the mode of expression itself. The unspoken, the coded and the partially hidden had value in themselves.
Protection as a way of life
One of the most important themes in the inscriptions is protection. Protection is perhaps less spectacular than curse and prophecy, but it is often the most necessary force. It concerns keeping illness at bay, averting danger, strengthening a person or creating safety for the journey through life and beyond. The Bryggen inscriptions and the Kvinneby plaque are good examples of how protection could be formulated as an active force in a small, material form.
For a reader with a pagan background, it is precisely here that continuity feels strongest. Many modern nature- and deity-faith traditions recognise this pattern: the use of formula, sign, object, intent and presence. It is not necessary to claim that everything is identical for the kinship to feel real. Traditions often live through resonance, not only through direct copying. The rune inscriptions display just such a field of resonance between past and present.
The old and the new age
When the Christianisation of the Nordic lands enters the picture, we do not see everything old disappear. Something more complex happens. Christian prayers and invocations of saints begin to stand side by side with older magical expressions. This is not necessarily a sign of confusion, but of practical and spiritual continuity. People use what works. They use what is familiar. They build bridges between traditions when life demands it.
It is here that a reading is often most fruitful, as long as it is honest about what the sources can actually show. One can well see a deep continuity in practice, symbol use and understanding of the world without claiming that history is entirely unbroken. It is perhaps more truthful to say that there exists a persistent current: a way of meeting the world that continually finds new expressions, but which never quite loses the old sense that nature, spirit and human being stand in mutual relation to one another.
A living heritage
In the end, the rune inscriptions tell us not only of a distant past. They tell of a type of human experience that is still alive. The fear of illness. The desire for protection. The urge to understand fate. The respect for the power of the word. And not least: the certainty that the visible world is not all there is.
It is this certainty that makes the texts' legacy so strong today. Not because we must believe exactly what those who carved them believed, but because we can still recognise the underlying movement: to meet life with ritual, attentiveness and a will to interplay with the unseen. There lies the deep continuity many of us seek, and to which these inscriptions can indeed bear witness.
When read with open senses, they do not appear as dead objects. They appear as traces of a tradition that can still awaken resonance. They remind us that the old Nordic world is not merely history, but also heritage, inspiration and a language for presence. The rune inscriptions remain as small, enduring witnesses to a cosmology in which power was never far away, but could always be called near.
Sources
Botham, Harley Nicole. Interpreting Old Norse Magic: A Thematic Analysis of Seiðr, According to Runic Inscriptions (2024).
Price, Neil. The Viking Way (2002).
Raudvere, Catharina. Works on seiðr, magic and Old Norse religion.
Brink, Stefan. Works on pre-Christian religion, cult and terminology.
Mitchell, Stephen A. Works on Old Norse magic and seiðr.
