Elder Futhark Rune Set

A complete set of the twenty-four Elder Futhark runes, each disc cut from pale birch and its stave burned in rather than painted, then rubbed with a little dark oil so the mark stands out clearly against the pale wood grain beneath it. They come with a twenty-fifth, unmarked blank disc, in a drawstring pouch of undyed linen, along with a folded guide naming each rune and its traditional meaning in turn. The runes served the early Germanic and Norse peoples as both a writing system and a set of lots for divination, two uses that were never fully separate in practice. The Havamal tells of Odin winning knowledge of the runes only after hanging nine nights upon the world-tree Yggdrasil, wounded and without food, a myth that has shaped how seriously the runes have been regarded in the centuries since. Draw a single stave for a day's counsel, or cast the full set onto a cloth and read the ones that land face up. The blank stave, a modern addition rather than an ancient one, is generally read as the unknowable or the not-yet-decided. Sold as a curiosity — no medical or scientific claims are made.