Galdr: Norse Rune Chanting, Vegvisir and Helm of Awe

What this article gives you: what the Eddas and sagas really say about galdr, where the modern legend begins, why the most popular "Viking runes" on rings and tattoos were first drawn in the nineteenth century, and how you can work with rune sounds today in an honest way. What it does not give you: a "lost original melody." Nobody has one.

What galdr means

Galdr (plural galdrar) is the Old Norse word for a sung or spoken magical incantation. It belongs to the verb gala, which means to sing, to call, and also to crow like a rooster. Old English has the related word galdor, Old High German galstar. Someone who had mastered galdr was a galdramadr, a spell-singer.

The key distinction is with seidr, the other great form of magic in the sagas. Seidr is a trance and seeing practice, associated above all with women and with the seeress, the volva. Galdr is word magic, built on fixed formulas, meter and repetition. Odin commands both, but in the sources he is above all the lord of galdr.

Galdr even had a meter of its own, the galdralag, a variant of the poetic meter ljodahattr in which a line is repeated with a small variation. The repetition is not a stylistic flaw. It is the technique: the spell circles until it lands. Anyone who chants runes today is, often without knowing it, reaching back to exactly that.

Odin's eighteen songs: galdr in the Havamal

The most important source is the Hávamál, "the Sayings of the High One," in the Poetic Edda. In stanzas 138 and 139, Odin tells how he hung for nine nights on the windswept tree, wounded by a spear, "given to Odin, myself to myself," without bread or drink, until he took up the runes: "screaming, I took them up." Even that moment is a cry, a sound.

Stanzas 146 to 163, known as the Ljóðatal or "list of songs," then name eighteen charms Odin knows: one against grief and sickness, one that bursts fetters, one that stops an arrow in flight, one against fire, one that settles quarrels, one that makes a hanged man speak. He never gives the words. We know what the songs were for, not how they sounded, and that is the most honest sentence anyone can say about galdr.

The tree Odin hangs on is Yggdrasil, the world tree. If you want to learn the runes themselves, their names and traditional meanings are in our guide to the Elder Futhark.

The sagas: Egil's warning and Groa's nine songs

In the Icelandic sagas, rune magic becomes concrete. In Egil's Saga, Egil Skallagrimsson carves runes into a drinking horn, reddens them with his own blood and speaks a verse over them. The horn shatters: the drink had been poisoned. Later he finds a sick girl in a farmhouse and, in her bed, a piece of whalebone on which a young man had clumsily carved love runes. Egil scrapes them off, burns the shavings, carves new runes and speaks the famous stanza: "No man should carve runes who cannot read them well." The girl recovers.

The scene is thirteenth-century literature about the tenth century. But it shows how people imagined galdr: signs, blood or pigment, and a verse that binds it all together.

In the Sigrdrífumál, an awakened valkyrie teaches the hero Sigurd victory runes, ale runes, birth runes and surf runes. And in the Grógaldr, "the Spell of Groa," preserved only in late manuscripts, a young man calls his dead mother from her grave, and she sings him nine protective songs for a dangerous journey. The poem carries the word galdr in its very title.

Relatives to the south: the Merseburg Charms

Galdr is not a purely Scandinavian phenomenon. The two Merseburg Charms, written down in the tenth century in the monastery of Fulda, follow the same construction: a short mythic narrative, then the working formula with repetition, "bone to bone, blood to blood, limb to limb." The Anglo-Saxon healing charms, such as the Nine Herbs Charm, are also sung formulas that bind plants and words together. Galdr belongs to a shared Germanic tradition of spoken magic, of which manuscripts preserve only fragments.

Timeline: from Eddic poem to tattoo

When	Source or event	What it shows
from c. AD 150	Runic inscriptions in the Elder Futhark	Formula words such as alu and laukaz on amulets
10th century	Merseburg Charms	A sung formula with repetition, in the south
13th century	Poetic Edda (Havamal, Sigrdrifumal), Egil's Saga	Odin's eighteen songs; runes carved and spoken over
c. 1600	The Icelandic Galdrabók	Magical staves (galdrastafir) with instructions
1625–1685	Icelandic witch trials	Owning staves used as evidence; about 25 people burned
1860	Huld Manuscript (Geir Vigfusson)	First known drawing of the Vegvisir
1908–1930s	Guido von List, Marby, Kummer	"Rune yoga" and rune chanting in the German nationalist milieu
from the 1980s	Edred Thorsson, modern Heathens, Wardruna, Heilung	Galdr as voice work, ritual and music

Galdrastafir: the Helm of Awe and the Vegvisir are not Viking symbols

The signs that end up today as "Viking runes" on rings, T-shirts and forearms are called galdrastafir, magical staves. They come from Icelandic manuscripts of the early modern period, from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, roughly six hundred years after the Viking Age ended. The Galdrabók, compiled around 1600, combines staves, invocations of Christian and pagan powers, and practical instructions: draw this sign in blood on parchment, put that one under your heel, and say this verse.

The Ægishjálmur, the "Helm of Awe" or "helm of terror," does have an old name: in the Poetic Edda, the dragon Fafnir wears an ægishjálmr before which everyone shrinks back. But the familiar design with eight trident-tipped arms appears only in the early modern manuscripts. The Vegvísir, the "wayfinder" meant to keep its bearer from getting lost in storms, appears for the first time in the so-called Huld Manuscript, compiled by Geir Vigfusson in Akureyri in 1860.

Anyone selling it as an ancient Viking symbol is selling a story, not a source. That does not make these signs worthless. It makes them what they are: Icelandic folk magic from an era when you could be burned for owning them. The pop culture wave in the US, from the History Channel's Vikings to festival merch, has done more to spread them than any manuscript ever did.

Burned for a sign: the Icelandic witch trials

Between 1625 and 1685, about twenty-five people were burned for sorcery in Iceland, almost all of them men; only one was a woman. Unlike on the European mainland, the trials rarely turned on pacts with the devil or witches' sabbaths. They turned on staves and spells: whoever owned sheets with galdrastafir, was said to have made a neighbor sick with a sign, or carved runes, was considered guilty. Many of the manuscripts we know today survived only because someone hid them.

The Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft in Hólmavík has told this story since 2000. Galdr is therefore not only myth and poetry but also a history of persecution, which is one more reason to treat it with respect.

The dark detour: rune chanting in the nationalist milieu

Honesty belongs here too. The modern idea of singing runes while taking body postures does not come from the Viking Age. It comes from German-speaking occultism of the early twentieth century. In 1908 Guido von List invented an "Armanen" futhark of eighteen runes, to match Odin's eighteen songs. In the 1920s and 1930s, Friedrich Bernhard Marby and Siegfried Adolf Kummer developed "rune gymnastics" and rune chanting in a racist, nationalist environment.

Anyone practicing galdr today should know this, so they can place books and groups correctly. In the US, the Anti-Defamation League lists some runes, such as Othala in certain stylized forms, in its database of hate symbols, precisely because extremists borrowed them. Mainstream practice has largely moved away from that legacy. Musicians such as Wardruna, whose founder Einar Selvik also composed for Vikings, and Heilung, whose piece "Krigsgaldr" introduced many listeners to the word, draw on the Eddas and the inscriptions, not on List.

Voices from practice

A voice coach who works with choirs and sings Nordic music herself told our editors that she likes to use rune names as a warm-up: the long vowels in Uruz, Isa or Othala open up the space in the mouth, and the repetition calms the breath, magical or not. An Icelander who has carved galdrastafir in wood for years said most customers want the Vegvisir "because it's from the Vikings," and every time he explains that it comes from a manuscript of 1860. Hardly anyone decides not to buy it. And one reader wrote that before difficult conversations she quietly sings the name of a rune three times, not so that something will happen, but so that she herself grows calm.

What we don't promise

We do not claim that sung runes or galdrastafir protect you, heal you, bring love or ward off enemies. There is no evidence for that. We do not claim to know how galdr sounded in the Viking Age: nobody knows, and anyone selling an "original" melody is reconstructing or inventing it. And we do not call the Helm of Awe a Viking symbol, because it is not one.

Practically: how to work with this

• Start with one rune. Choose a rune from the Elder Futhark whose meaning speaks to you, and learn its name and traditional reading before you sing it.
• Breathe first. Sit upright and take three slow breaths into the belly. Galdr is voice work: no breath, no sound.
• Intone on the out-breath. Say the rune name slowly and stretch the vowels: "Feh-hoo," "Oo-rooz." Three or nine times, following the old texts' fondness for those numbers. Louder is not better; low and even is enough.
• Join sign and sound. Carve or paint the rune on wood or paper and sing it while you do, the way Egil carved and spoke. If you have a personal intention, build your own sign rather than copying someone else's stave; our guide on how to make a sigil shows three methods.
• Close deliberately. Sit in silence for a moment afterward and put the sign away. If you like, write down what you noticed.
• Check your sources. Avoid books and groups that lean on List, Marby or Kummer or tie runes to "blood and soil." If you also use runes for divination, start with our guide on how to read runes.

Frequently asked questions

What is galdr?

Galdr is the Old Norse word for a sung or spoken magical incantation, from gala, to sing. In the Eddas, Odin is the master of galdr; the Havamal lists eighteen of his charms without giving their words.

What is the difference between galdr and seidr?

Galdr is word magic with fixed, often repeated formulas. Seidr is a trance and seeing practice that the sagas associate mainly with seeresses, the volva.

Are the Helm of Awe and the Vegvisir Viking symbols?

No. Both come from Icelandic manuscripts of the early modern period; the Vegvisir is first recorded in the Huld Manuscript of 1860. Only the name of the Helm of Awe is old, since it already appears in the Poetic Edda.

What are galdrastafir?

Icelandic magical staves, usually built from lines, circles and trident shapes, preserved in grimoires such as the Galdrabok of around 1600. They were drawn or carved and paired with a spoken verse.

How do you chant runes?

Say the rune name slowly on the out-breath and stretch the vowels, usually three or nine times in a row. No original melody has survived.

Is rune chanting connected to the far right?

Not in itself. Modern rune gymnastics did grow out of the German nationalist milieu of the 1920s, but today's practice mostly draws on the Eddas and the inscriptions. It is worth checking sources and groups carefully.

Sources and further reading

• Hávamál, stanzas 138–145 (Rúnatal) and 146–163 (Ljóðatal), Poetic Edda; English translation by Carolyne Larrington, Oxford World's Classics.
• Sigrdrífumál and Grógaldr (Svipdagsmál), Poetic Edda and later manuscripts.
• Egil's Saga, chapters 44 (the horn) and 72 (the whalebone).
• Stephen E. Flowers (ed.), The Galdrabók: An Icelandic Book of Magic, 2nd ed., 2005.
• Huld Manuscript (Geir Vigfusson, Akureyri 1860), National and University Library of Iceland.
• Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft (Strandagaldur), Hólmavík.
• Further reading on Desire Diaries: Sleipnir, Odin's eight-legged horse · Jormungandr, the Midgard Serpent

This article describes the history of Norse and Icelandic word magic and a contemporary voice practice. It makes no healing, protection or success claims.

We know what Odin's songs were for. How they sounded, the wind took with it.