Wordhoard

Atheling: A noble, usually of royal blood. From Old English æþeling,

BCE: Before the Common Era.

Bind Rune: Two or more runes combined into a single symbol.

Blót: A word in both Old English and Old Norse denoting "sacrfice," although the ritual is much closer to Christian Communion than what  comes to the minds of many people when they think of the word sacrifice.

CE: Common Era, the manner of dating most commonly used in the Occident.

Dísir:  Goddesses who act as guardians of a given family, generally assumed today to be the family's ancestral mothers.

Ettin (OE eoten; ON jötunn): A giant, generally the enemy of the gods.

Futhark:  A modern term for the rune row, taken from the first six rune sounds.

Futhorc:  A modern name for the Anglo-Frisian rune row, taken from the first six rune sounds.

Galdor: 1. An Old English word denoting a spell or incantation composed in poetic metre. 2. The art of using galdors.

Landvættir:  Land spirits.

Mægen:   An Old English word meaning "strength" or "power," it could also be applied to the metaphysical power which all things possess.

Níðstöng:  An Old Icelandiic word meaning "pole of scorn" or "pole of hatred." An extremely powerful runic curse in which runestaves are carved upon a hazel pole which then thrust into the ground.

OE:  Old English, English as spoken before 1100 CE

OIcel:  Old Icelandic, the Icelandic dialect of Old Norse.

ON:  Old Norse, the Norse languages as spoken before 1300 CE.

Poetic Edda:  A collection of mythological poems written down in Iceland in the twelfth or thirteenth century, although containing material which may be even older.

Proto-Germanic:  The language from which all Germanic languages (of which English is one) stem. It is largely a hypothetical language, as we have but few inscriptions recorded in Proto-Germanic. A hypothetical language is a language for which no written records exist, but which can be reconstucted through comparitive analysis of the languages descended from it.

Pseudo-rune:  A rune like letter or symbol that was never actually used in inscriptions and appears only in manuscripts.

Rune: 1. a mystery or secret, whether secular or religious ("the mysteries of the universe"). 2. One of the ancient Germanic letters representing the runes or mysteries of the universe.

Runeman (OE rynemann): One skilled in the use of runes.

SeiðR:  A form of magic practised among the Old Norse speakers and perhaps practised among the other Germanic peoples as well, dealing with the manipulation of the soul. It is unrelated to the use of  the runes or galdor.

Symbel: An Old English word denoting a drinking rite conducted in rounds whereby each person would seek to improve his wyrd by boasting of those things which he had done and those things which he intended to do.

Thegn: In Anglo-Saxon England, a freeman who held the land of a lord or a king in return for military service. The forerunner of the medaevial knight.

Thurse (OE þyrs; ON þurs): A giant in Germanic mythology, generally the enemies of  the gods. Synonymous with ettin.

The Well of Wyrd (ON UrðarbrunnR): The Well at the base of the World Tree, to which the Norns attend everyday. The
Well of Wyrd gives shape to time and the causuality of events. Actions which occur within the worlds of the Tree fall into the
Well like dew, where they become part of the past. They then rise back up through the Tree's roots like water to influence
actions in the present.

The World Tree: Called in Old Norse Yggdrasill, it is probably identical to the Irminsul or "universal column" of Old Saxon sources. The World Tree contains the Nine Worlds and sets in the Well of Wyrd much like a houseplant setting in a pot.

Wyrd:  1. The entity which governs the process of the present becoming the past and the continued influence the past has upon the present. 2. This process. 3. The condition of one's life based on past events. That is, the process of Wyrd applied to an individual.