About this text
Olive Bray's translation of the Poetic Edda, published 1908 for the Viking Club, with W. G. Collingwood's illustrations. It carries Hávamál — including the passages where Óðinn hangs on the windy tree and wins the runes — and Sigrdrífumál's runic lore: the oldest literary account of what the runes are for. This is the corpus a rune oracle rests on, not a rune manual: no Elder Futhark instruction book exists in the public domain, and this house offers none.
The clause that rides with it
The rune poems are older than any modern rune book, but they belong to the 16-rune Younger Futhark and the 29-rune Anglo-Saxon set. The 24-rune Elder Futhark is a later scholarly reconstruction, and its meanings as used today are a modern layer. We publish the sources and say so.
Download the PDF (free) — public domain, no account needed. Practice the system in the rune oracle.