Every day from golden cups.
The charming influence of history could not be more beautifully described.
Sokvabek is the brook of the deep. From the deep arise the thoughts and roll as cool refreshing waves through golden words. Saga can tell, Odin can think, about it. Thus they sit together day after day and night after night and refresh their minds from the fountain of history. Saga is the second of the goddesses. She dwells at Sokvabek, a very large and stately abode. The stream of history is large, it is broad and deep. Saga is from the word meaning to say. In Greece Klio was one of the muses, but in Norseland Saga is alone, united with Odin, the father of heroic deeds. Her favor is the hope of the youth and the delight of the old man.
SECTION XV. ODIN AS THE INVENTOR OF RUNES.
The original meaning of the word rune is secret, and it was used to signify a mysterious song, mysterious doctrine, mysterious speech, and mysterious writing. Our ancestors had an alphabet called runes, before they learned the so-called Roman characters. The runic stave-row was a futhore (f, u, th, o, r, k), not an alphabet (A, B) as in Greek or Latin. But what does it mean mythologically, that Odin is the inventor of the runes? Odin himself says in his famous Rune-song in the Elder Edda:
I know that I hung
On a wind-rocked tree[[48]]
Nine whole nights,
With a spear wounded
And to Odin offered,