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The Wedding Gift - an Einarinn short story and portfolio of pictures |
The Runes of Einarinn
I am always surprised when I encounter readers who are surprised to learn that the Runes of Einarinn are something I devised, along with my husband Steve, to add to the background colour and atmosphere of the Tales. We started from the fact that Livak, as a gambler, would need something to gamble with. I didn't want to use dice, as not particularly distinctive nor yet playing cards, as being in some intangible sense too 'modern'. We considered rune stones but decided that readers would bring too many assumptions with them if we simply adopted the Viking Futhark or Tolkien's runes. So we came up with the idea of a runic dice, a triangular prism, just to be different. With three runes per prism, we squared that number to give us the nine rune bones or sticks, which in turn gave us the total of twenty seven symbols, all numbers common in traditional belief systems and superstitions.
Given the world of Einarinn has a Sun and Greater and Lesser Moons, that first set of three symbols was obvious. Then we had to decide on the rest. Taking the first three out of the total left us with twenty four to find. Twenty four can be divided to give six sets of four, which meant we could use the four elements of air, earth, fire and water. So we decided to devise five more sets of four. We looked for images with a universal application, not only within the quasi-historical world we were inventing, but also for the reader, so that meanings and interpretations would be easily understood, rather than having to be explained in tedious detail. The Wolf is a good example; there is endless lore on its use as as symbol but you don't need to know any of that for the image to have a resonance, from the negative associations of childhood memories of Red Riding Hood to the more positive ideas of Oz in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The Drum works in the same way; drumming as a celebration is an automatic association, contrasting with the ominous thud of war drums in distant hills remembered from old movies. Then we had to find logical groups of three, from the symbols we had chosen.
Having devised our symbols and their various combinations and permutations, I continually add to my notes as I discover new interpretations from different times and cultures. Working with them through the course of the series, I have been delighted to find that their universality and flexibility have been proved time and again.