Slow Havamal: 144

In verse 144 Odin asks if you know how to write, read, paint, test, ask, bless, send, and offer the runes.

Jackson Crawford states that the first four actions in this verse refer to things done to the runes, but he doubts the second four apply in the same manner, because they aren’t things one can do to or with runes. I disagree with some hesitation, because he’s the expert and I could be missing something. But in other places he states his skepticism of runes being used as anything other than an alphabet—for example, in divination a with modern users. I think that the second set of actions—ask (or pray), bless, send, and offer—are very clear and common options to those who are accustomed to religious and esoteric practices. If one doubts that the runes are anything but an alphabet, of course they make little sense. Therefore, should we explore the possibility that they had a wider range of uses?

Verse 80 already suggests divination when it says “What you ask of the runes will prove true.” They can be tested with questions, and this could also cover the meaning of “ask” in the common sense, though bidja also means pray. Since Odin is interested in which of the many ways the reader knows how to use runes, he might wonder if you know how to divine, and also how to make requests or prayers to (or using) them, or perhaps even praying through them the way someone does the beads of the rosary, with a set line uttered at each station.

Blota can mean bless, but also sacrifice in a religious sense. So the runes could potentially be inscribed or invoked to bless someone, or maybe to bless a sacrifice of meat, or mead, or whatever was appropriate. One might send them, in the manner of a magical working directed to or against someone else. I can imagine them being written on some talismanic object and consecrated for a specific purpose, and in fact we do find objects with curses and prayers written on them in the archaeological record. The offering aspect would also seem to suggest using runes to increase the power or the glory of a typical offering.

That’s what symbols do. They may indeed have begun as letters, but letters themselves are symbols, and they can take on additional meaning over time and in varying contexts. It’s not impossible, though we have no definite evidence, that runes developed a wide range of uses in the Norse world, from common language to esoteric and religious practice. These latter may have been something that only a select cadre of initiates ever learned. This verse certainly suggests they served a wider purpose, and the error required to make sense of it otherwise is obscure. I think it’s worth at least entertaining the notion that runes had many uses, some of which have not survived in the written or archaeological record. In fact, if we take verses like 80 and 144 at face value, attested uses do indeed live on.