I've been working on my book, and in a chunk of the story there's an attempt by the main character to discover the meaning of a symbol - I'll leave it at that in an attempt to avoid spoilers. The symbol in question incorporates the Ingwaz (ᛜ) rune from the Elder Futhark, and although I have done research on the rune in the past I thought I'd give myself a refresher and see what I could learn.
Turns out quite a bit of additional information pertaining to Ingwaz is out there, and Wikipedia has some shockingly extensive information surrounding the rune and how it pertains to the Scandinavian hero-god Yngvi, who is otherwise known as Freyr.
Freyr turns out to be a major player in the Norse pantheon, is a member of the Vanir, a brother to Freyja (Odin's wife), and was given the realm of Ælfheim (otherwise known as Alfheim, Álfheimr and Elfhame) as a gift from the Gods due indirectly to the loss of his tooth in battle, and the timely intervention of a faerie to whom he gifted the tooth, thus establishing the first Tooth Faerie. This information alone is quite enough to cause the hairs on my arms to stand up, but there's quite a bit more surrounding the god.
I've been on-again/off-again obsessed with Ælfheim since I discovered that much of the lore in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings borrowed from Norse and other western European mythology. My limited access to information at the time consisted of the local library in my hometown, from which I was able to glean only the few most vague references to Ælfheim, and consequently I gave up for that time.
I used to have a poem reflecting my attraction to Ælfheim but I no longer have a copy of it, it has most likely long since disintegrated in some New Orleans landfill as a consequence of Hurricane Katrina. I wish I could remember it, or that I had taken the time to commit it to some sort of modern digital form (ironic since it was originally composed on an Apple MacIntosh ][e). I have long held the belief that Ælfheim was once connected to our world and vanished from it in a fashion similar to the fall of Atlantis, but based on recent discoveries online pertaining to this realm, which is more a separate realm only loosely connected to our world than an actual physical place within it is causing me to rethink that theory.
Also pertaining to the elves of Ælfheim are the Déyendræ, of which I will need to take the time to describe in more detail later, but for now I will simply state that they could be considered an elder species classification or their own individual pantheon. The reason that I bring this up is that the primary member of the Déyendræ, Namir, is known to have nine rings - which could be interpreted as reference to the nine realms or worlds of Norse mythology/cosmology. In fact I'm now starting to wonder if I inadvertently stumbled across some higher level creation mythology pertaining to the Norse/Scandinavian mythos, which only gets the more complex when you watch the movie Thor and its various references to science as magic and vice versa, the cosmos and such. Yes I know it's a comic book, but there's a mythos core that was tapped in order to create this story. Stories are built on stories after all.
I realize I'm rambling a bit without explaining in detail, but I prefer to maintain my (limited) credibility for a bit before I go ahead and spill all the beans from my head. Let's just say this is going to take at least a few posts to make life easier I'm creating a new tag for it (Déyendræ) because they will most likely be separated by other posts.
I will go so far as to state that I believe whatever may have blocked the connection between our world (Midgard) and Alfheim is in the process of being lifted, and this lifting has been ongoing for several months. The transitions of our sun, the increasing levels of enlightenment among my friends, family and acquaintances, online or offline, and also the increase in the birth rate of twins, the death rate of multiple celebrities and technology specialists (CNN just announced the death of Donna Summer as I typed this, and I'm not just referencing Steve Jobs), and various other changes pertaining to climate and nature are all tied together. Funny how I'm poor at recognizing patterns during a chess match yet I can see so many things tied together from an outsider's point of view in our world.
The other important thing to mention is that the lifting pertains to all of these worlds or realms, and consequently it will not just be elves and faeries crossing into people's back yards, but other things as well. Consequently it is very important to stay vigilant.
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