Runic Wisdom

 This web site records progress in massive project centered around the study of ancient rune poems as wisdom poetry, especially the Old English Rune Poem. The project to study the Old English Rune Poem necessarily depends on other information, including early medieval English Catholicism and its roots and background, the Old English language, feudal socioeconomics, wisdom poetry, theologies, and so on. Consequently, the project has become large and complex

This site is maintained by Gary Stanfield. You can contact him at “grystf at hotmail.com”.

First Work in the Project

The first work in the project was The Stanzas of the Old English Rune Poem, which analyzes each stanza individually and includes appendices on several related topics. It was part of a planned two-volume work called The OERP Book. However, I learned to break the project into separate documents due to the difficulty of putting it all into one huge book.

The first edition of The Stanzas of the Old English Rune Poem was published in the late Twentieth Century, in volumes 7 through 11 of a periodical called The Rune. It was written for an audience of very literate and intelligent Pagans and neoPagans.

The second edition of The Stanzas of the Old English Rune Poem is written for a more technically-inclined audience: those who would teach Teutonic Reconstruction religion, for professional philologists, and for others who are interested in a detailed and in-depth analysis of the structure and meanings of the poem. Practically all comments that related one stanza to another were omitted.

A copy of the second edition's first volume is available here: Stanzas of the OERP.

A copy of the list of references (bibliography), which was omitted from the first volume in 2012, is available here: List of References.

Stanzas of the Old English Rune Poem by Gary Stanfield is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

I allow distribution of Stanzas of the Old English Rune Poem whole and without editing at no charge. I also allow (and encourage) separate use of the translations in Appendix G without editing and with attribution. Publication of any of this work in translation into another modern language, and other uses not covered by the “fair use” doctrine require permission.

Formats of Writings

I learned skills in making electronic books after I wrote the second edition of Stanzas, so the 2012 has some technical flaws. I am yet learning skills in formatting electronic books and articles.

It is best to make three editions of an electronic book: display-friendly, printer-friendly, and mobile-phone friendly. Some users prefer to read and store the book on a computer, some want to read on a tablet or cell phone, and some are willing to print out all or part of the book. Following is the doctrine I developed in 2019.

The display-friendly format has light print on dark background, so the display is not glaring into your face and the pages look attractive. Page size is 6” by 9”, which is standard for print books, gives legibility on a display of at least 6” diagonal measurement, and will work well on most computer monitors, even in landscape orientation.

The printer-friendly format has black print on white background on an 8.5” by 11” page to avoid wasting ink on color and economize on the amount of paper used. The US letter size page will print on A4 sheets. The page size used can be displayed on a 22” display screen in portrait orientation.

The e-pub format and Kindle format fit on cell phones and small tablets, although those formats do not handle tables well.

In all these electronic-book formats, you need a way to cite locations without referring to page numbers, for pagination differs between the display-friendly and printer-friendly formats, and it is absent from the epub and Kindle formats. I have not settled on a format to allow citing locations without using page numbers, and I am open to advice.

Currently, I use 5 layers of headings that one can use to cite a location in the text. I do not think this is the best way, but it corresponds to the way I write notes and drafts. It also corresponds to military staff writing and certain government reports, such as the famous Mueller Report, which uses 4 levels of outline headings (Volume 1 of that report is available here).

An alternative is to use three layers of headings and numbered paragraphs, which makes a less cumbersome way of citing a location without using pagination. This is roughly similar to how people cite locations in the Christian Bible (book, chapter/psalm, and verse) or various Greek classics without referring to page numbers.

Links to Materials

This page last edited 2026-January-31.