Hearthside

The 2025 New Moon rune according to The Nordic Animist Year by Rune Rasmussen is Tyr/Tiwaz. In these posts I examine the prediction for the year based on the Swedish rune poem in Rune’s book. I then compare the Swedish rune poem to other rune poems to try to gain more insights. After that I examine historical data on weather/climate, as well as politics, to try to predict what to expect in this year. This is all speculative. I want to see if the 19 year cycle can predict world events, specifically in Scandinavia and circumpolar regions.  We start with the Swedish Rune poem as that is in Rune Rasmussen’s book. Swedish Rune Poem: Tyr i Vatŭm ledast.  Tyri brinner bäst i.e.. dyrast. Tyr (bull) is badly off in water/Tyr (bull) is meanest of spirits. Resinous wood is best for burning, i.e. hardest. The strangest part of this poem to me was how Rune was translating Tyr as a bull. I am not sure what his reasoning for this was. Since it doesn’t seem to actually say that in the Swedis...

These posts are sometimes the hardest to keep up with, since it is a long-term project that may or may not yield anything interesting. In addition, I have found this year particularly difficult, at first due to personal time constraints, but also because this year has been surprising me! Rune Rasmussen talks of a 19 year cycle which he associates each year with a rune in the Swedish rune poem. What I am doing each year is looking at the rune poems, plus historical data, to see if I can predict trends for the year. Think of it as a Heathen Farmer’s Almanac or something.  I had initial thoughts based on the rune Sol as to what that might mean for 2024, and went to historical data to see if I might be correct. The year 2005 was marked by drought and wildfires across much of Canada and Northwestern Europe. There was also a tendency towards large winter storms in Eastern Canada. Similarly, in 1986 Winnipeg was hit by a massive blizzard and in 1967 New Brunswick was hit by a huge winter ...

The last few years I have been doing something with Rune Rasmussen’s Nordic Animist Year and using his years along with the Rune poems to create a sort of Farmer’s Almanac type prediction for the year. Now, I had been doing that in about February the last couple years, so that I had a taste of the year already but had not got too far into it. Unfortunately, time has gotten away from me this year. I have a lot more Heathen and non-Heathen commitments this year, and also with it being the Year of Aun/Unn, I have had a divided focus.  So now it is nearing the end of May and I am just writing this. The Ar year, “Ar” being the Jera rune. It is the “Year” Year. Happy Year?  But more seriously, this year marks the end of a period of stagnance in the Runic Animist Years. We had a 3 year period of stagnance (think covid in this case) and we are emerging. The Ar year is about the return to greenery and abundance. We can expect warmer weather, better crops, and coming out of our stagnanc...