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If you check the cover detail, you will see that a sequence of runes appears, spiralling in towards the centre in one cycle after another. These runes have been especially chosen to reflect the background to the book - the great epic saga that led to the Battle of Ragnarok. This tale is known as the Voluspa epic and is one of the most well known Eddic poems from the Norse pantheon, being a poem that appears in what is known as the Elder Edda or Poetic Edda: a group of 34 poems first discovered in the seventeenth century and thought to have been written about four centuries earlier. The Voluspa is also known as the Sibyl's Prophecy and it tells how the world was created, how it moved from balance into conflict and how this spiralled inevitably towards destruction and the establishment, after that, of a new age.
We used this myth as a loose basis for choosing the runes that appear on the cover, selecting the runes as follows:
The great poem begins with the seeress (Bjarkan) asking for silence (Naudr) from both the gods (Os) and mankind (Madr). She especially asks Odin (Raedo) for permission to recite.
She then goes on to tell the story of Creation - from the Nine Worlds and the great Tree, to the bringing forth of the Earth (Ar), drawn from and created out of the seas (Logr). Maddy's tale is told on this world.
The Aesir (Os) create order in the Cosmos (Yr) and the land moves into a Golden Age (Fe, Ar and Sol), marked by the construction of temples, the use of forges and the development of tools (Thuris, Ur). Into this strong and stable world come the Giants (Thuris), the dwarves from under the ground (Yr) and humankind (Madr).
But all does not remain in harmony, and there is conflict between the order of the Aesir (Os) and the chaos of the Vanir (Kaen), leading to conflict (Tyr). In a further revelation (Bjarkan), the seeress predicts how Odin (Raedo) is to throw the first spear (Thuris), losing an eye, whilst Balder, the fairest of all the gods, must die (Naudr). All spirals onwards towards a huge battle - Ragnarok - at which time the gods will be swallowed by Chaos (Tyr and Hagall for the destruction; Naudr, Ur, Os and Kaen for the power of Chaos to destroy the gods).
The tale continues on beyond this point but we left the end of the cycle here, after Ragnarok, as this is the world into which Maddy Smith is born.
The runes shown, therefore, are:
BJARKAN, NAUDR, OS, MADR, RAEDO
AR, LOGR
OS, YR, FE, AR, SOL, THURIS, UR, THURIS, YR, MADR
OS, KAEN, TYR, BJARKAN, RAEDO, THURIS, NAUDR, TYR, HAGALL, NAUDR, UR, OS and KAEN
See if you can identify them on the jacket of the book! |
