The Whisper of Ancient Signs: Runes in Modern Life

Unbeknownst to itself, the modern city is permeated with runic symbolism. Sharp, as

though wind-broken characters gaze at us from book covers and vinyl sleeves, flash in

neon luminescence on videogame screens, gleam with cold silver in jewelry shop

windows, and settle as dark pigment under the skin in tattoo parlors. Even the tiny blue

Bluetooth icon, an everyday feature of our smartphones, is nothing other than an

ancient monogram: a bind-rune of two Younger Futhark runes, Hagall and Bjarkan, the

initials of Danish king Harald Bluetooth. Signs born nearly two millennia ago on the

harsh, mist-shrouded fringes of the classical world did not dissolve into the oblivion of

the centuries. They have returned, taking on new flesh in digital reality. Yet between

what runes appear to be in the imagination of our contemporaries and what they served

as for the Germanic peoples of the Migration Period or the Norse bœndr of the Viking

Age lies a profound conceptual chasm.