Futhark? What's a Futhark?

The first six runes of the Norse alphabet are the representation of the sounds that create the word 'futhark.' Rune stones -- large stones with runic inscriptions -- have been discovered in Heavener, Oklahoma, and in Kensington, Minnesota. Are they authentic? Did Vikings in fact travel deeper into the continent than Leif Eiriksson's camp in Newfoundland (pronounced New-FOUND- lund by Canadians).

Man has always been a seeker of adventure, curious, a creature desirous of finding out what is around the next corner. If a camp was created in the Americas, as has now has been firmly established via archaeological evidence, then what kept one or two or more of those curious souls from wandering deeper into the continent?

Read about the Heavener rune stone.http://www.midwesternepigraphic.org/heavener01.html — Read about the Heavener rune stone.
http://www.midwesternepigraphic.org/heavener01.html

I would go. Would you?

Unfortunately in both cases -- Heavener and Kensington -- skeptics step forward to call fraud. But are they? The runes are intricately carved in stone, to what end? What does one have to gain spending endless hours creating these intricate tools of communication, these works of art, just to fool us?

We were taught that Columbus "discovered" America. I agree that his exploration led to the era of European colonization around the world (for better or worse is another topic altogether) but "discover"? There have been people wandering the Americas for millenia. Many of them left behind the artifacts of their journeys. We're finding new evidence everyday.

The rune stones left by the wandering Norse people are written using the Futhark, their alphabet. I for one believe the Vikings were explorers. They are infamous because of their raids in northern Europe, but they were human and humans are curious beings. The Futhark will help us to understand.

Several runes figure prominently in the saga Dance of the Hummingbirds. Lars Svensson will eloquently explain them to you.

One of the arcane snippets bandied about by my Dad while I was growing up was ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.

“Do you know what that means?” He looked me directly in the eye, because an answer was expected. My reply? Always “no.” Dad invariably followed with “Well then, go look it up.”

I would answer with an, “ok,” and hurry off to more important things like canoeing, trapezing into the river, or cheer practice.

For reasons unknown, the phrase stuck with me. Perhaps it was the enigma, or its rhyme, or the way it rolled off my tongue when it occasionally crossed my mind. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny – mysterious words with a musical sound – became encapsulated and stored someplace along the periphery of conscious and unconscious, randomly surfacing to amuse me and, of course, remember Dad.

I went on to college, majored in psychology and anthropology, and never heard those words – ever. Time went by. Weeks became months and then years. At some point I found myself becoming ever more intrigued by psychologist Carl Jung, and his theories of the unconscious. Not in a formal sense, mind you, just curiosity.

Oddly, several years ago my son Robert gave me a book for Christmas, Pilgrim by Timothy Findley is a fictional tale of Carl Jung’s life. There within the story were those magical words – ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny – along with a detailing of Jung’s idea that we may inherit the memories of our ancestors, caching them away in our subliminal archives.

You bet I looked it up!

Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny is the now debunked theory posited by German zoologist Ernst Haeckel in the mid-1800s. Its premise holds that as an advanced species develops, it passes through the evolutionary stages represented by adult organisms of more primitive species. For example, a human embryo will undergo changes in utero in a specific order from fish (gill slits that become ears) to amphibian to human. Each successive stage in the development of an individual represents one of the adult forms appearing in its evolutionary history.

So what does all of this mean to my writing journey, my story? The answer is a question: Do we hold the collective memories of our ancestors filed away in that 90% of our brain we call the unconscious? If we do, are dreams, paranormal and déjà vu occurrences merely the resurfacing of our grandparents’ life experiences? Are past-life regressions not about our lives at all, but rather a prodding and poking of the primal memory bank, a stirring up of the daily lives of our ancestors? Do we have a library of our own evolutionary history stored in the deep recesses of our temporal lobes, more easily accessed by some of us than others? This is what Lillie Lisle, a curious young archaeologist living in Tucson, Arizona, seeks to know. Dance of the Hummingbirds is her search for meaning, her story of journeying into the depths of the psyche.

It is my hope that scientists who are conducting new studies on our brains reexamine their expulsion of Haeckel’s theory. Maybe ontogeny really does recapitulate phylogeny?

Yes, I looked it up. Thanks Dad.