Recently, I became aware of a book called “Queering the Runes” by one Siri Vincent Plouff, an individual who is the host of something called “the Heathen’s Journey Podcast.” I can’t say I’m familiar with their work or their podcast, but then again I have been out of the online Pagan and Heathen spaces for years at this point so that really isn’t much of a surprise. According to their Amazon blurb though, the podcast is “…dedicated to creating space to learn about heathenry from an antiracist, queer perspective.” So you may draw whatever usual conclusions you have about them from that. After all, we in the Heathen community are well aware of what “anti-racist” typically means when it comes to our various faiths.

I’m going to also start this post by stating I do not have a copy of this book they have written, these are just my own particular musings. I don’t know Plouff’s credentials (not that those really matter, must of us aren’t ‘accredited.’ I myself have only the accreditation of a BA in history, 20 something years as a practicing Heathen, and an my status as a Gothi comes from being declared so by a couple other people who were/are Gothi themselves), so I’m not going to question those. I have no interest in attacking them as a person or scholar.

So why am I making this post? Because I take an issue with the idea of “queering” the Runes. Those who have read through this blog, and who may have known me from my terrorizing comments section back in the day, know that I have a very particular view on how Pagan religions should be practices. I am not against ‘adapting’ or ‘growing’ Pagan and Heathen religions with new ideas. I have done that myself, through my religious journey under Hel, so I am not a hard core ‘reconstructionist.” What I am, though, is a bit of an ‘old ways supremacist,’ which sounds bad at first, but isn’t (to me) when you understand what I mean.

By ‘old ways supremacist’ I mean that the old ways should be held in a ‘superior’ position to new ways. The faiths, as they were, were given to us by the Gods. They set and defined our religions and the cultures that followed from them. They are what the Gods’ viewed as right, good, and moral, and the closer we can live to them, the better. New ideas are not inherently bad, but when looking to consider or adopt them, we must look to our Gods and Ancestors to see if this is an idea that lines up with the morality of whichever path we wish to follow.

Unfortunately, not everyone share’s this view and my blog is filled with me discussing, and sometimes ranting, about what I call “Carving new words onto the old stones.” Guys like Halstead who believed there was no place for hard core polytheistic belief in Paganism and that we should take a more atheistic view on things. Guys like Rhyd who preached that if your Paganism wasn’t Communist then it needed to be eradicated. The list goes on and on. They placed new ideas, even ones that ran directly counter to the known Lore and religious texts, over that which was. Something I could not abide then and still honestly can’t now.

Which brings me back to Siri and “Queering the Runes.” Our Norse/Germanic ancestors had some pretty clear ideas about sex/gender identity and what it meant to be a man and a woman. While these gender roles don’t always line up with modern ones, they were there, they were defined, and they were expected to be followed throughout all parts of society. Men were supposed to be “manly,” women were supposed to be “feminine,” and if one or the other crossed over…well let’s just say it was extremely frowned upon.

Odin was respected because of his skills with Galdr and the Runes, for these were considered “manly” forms of magic, but he was often ‘questioned’ for his practice of Seidr because it was viewed as a ‘womanly’ or ‘feminine’ magic. Thor was mocked when he dressed up as a bride by wearing women’s clothing. One of the worst insults you could give to a man was ‘ergi’ which translates to ‘unmanly’, ‘coward,’ and the like, though from my research it seems that the modern equivalent might actually be the modern use of ‘faggot.’ According to a quick check on Wikipedia will show us that ‘ergi’ or its adjective form ‘argr’ were related to ‘níð’ which is related to the ‘níðingr‘ spell/rite, one of the most devastating curses one could use as it was a malicious spell that essentially rendered the object of the curse as a ‘nothing.’

It is difficult to find an exact definition of what “queer” means these days, but one I found states that the term refers to “someone who is not heterosexual and whose gender identity isn’t cis-gender.” Frankly, I have no idea if this is correct because the LGBT+ community is constantly changing meanings and nomenclatures, but for the purposes of this post I suppose it will have to do. So “Queering the Runes” would mean “to take the Runes and redefine them as something non-hetrosexual and non-cisgender.”

And herein lies my issue. The Norse/Germanic peoples, and more specifically the Aesir and the Vanir are heterosexual societies that had no concept of “transgenderism.” Transgenderism, as a concept, didn’t exist until the 1900’s. It is an incredibly new idea. The Runes, gifted to us by Odin were a “manly” magic, meaning they are by definition defined by a heterosexual and ‘cis-gender’ binary. To ‘queer’ the runes is to make them ‘argr,’ or unmanly.

One of the lessons Hel taught me is a form of Objectivism, which holds the concept of “A is A.” A thing is a thing, it cannot be something else. This is usually used to judge moral issues (something that is good is good, regardless of who does it, the same for something that is evil), but it applies to other areas as well. The Runes are themselves, in meaning, purpose, and nature, they cannot be anything but what they are. To change what they are, to make that which is ‘manly’ into something that is ‘unmanly’ fundamentally changes them, making them not what it is, but to make it nothing, to make it níð.

Years ago, back when genetically modifying things was viewed more as a ‘strange new world’ rather than a ‘completely fucking shit up’ thing, I recall going to the store and seeing apples that had been gm’d to taste like grapes. The concept, I won’t deny, was intriguing on an intellectual level, but on a practical, physical level, well…they weren’t apples anymore. They were something else. They might have had the form of an apple, but something fundamental had been deliberately changed about them. This is what Siri’s book does. They may claim their desire is to ‘further understanding of the runes’ by ‘queering them,’ but at the end of the day what they have accomplished is making something new, something strange, and something else, cloaked in a familiar form. ‘Queer’ Runes may look like Runes, but they are not the Runes given to us by Odin, their meanings and natures have been changed. The apple no longer tastes like an apple, it tastes like something else, because it is something else.

Siri has literally written new words upon the old stones, and then stands there claiming that their work is legitimate because it is on those old stones. It is not knowledge, but vandalism. It is not a celebration, but an insult, the gravest of insults. One that we should do our best never to repeat.

Hela Bless.