Odhala ᛟ

Odhala; heritage

There is no surviving Icelandic rune poem for Odhala. However in Blood of Wolves, the third of the Rune Song trilogy, I filled that gap with;

‘Odhala er gjöf höfdhingjans, öruggur aflinn og löglegt frels, réttur allra kynslódha…

’Odhala is the chieftain’s gift, safe hearth and lawful liberty, the right of all generations.’

This is the hearth rune, the rune of ancestral right. It has strong connotations of tribe/family and heritage within a group. Odhala speaks of the liberty of individuals within a just, well-ordered society. It implies that those rights pass through generations; a place where forebears can be honoured and where the family’s legacy can grow.

In the Rune Song trilogy, odhala is integral to the prophecy that a fate-weaver would come to Adelais’s people, ‘born of wolf-kind and of mud, to roll back the advance of [the enemy]’.

For introductions to other runes, there’s a pull-down menu under the ‘Norse Runes’ tab. More details about the Rune Song epic fantasy trilogy via my ‘books’ pages or on Amazon UK or Amazon.com. All books are published by Second Sky / Hachette and are available in print, ebook, and audiobook formats.