It took me awhile to figure out how to approach the editorial for this issue.  There wasn’t any pressing subject or Needful topic.  At first I thought, “Hey, it’s summer.  We’ve worked hard and everything is coming along nicely.  So, no wonder it feels like a time to take it easy and enjoy the season.”  To some extent that’s true, but I was taking far too short of a view.

Midsummer, proper, has just passed and hopefully, at that time, when the worlds were especially close we all spent some quality time with kith and kin, the Gods and Goddesses, ancestors above and below, and all the Holy Wights.  Hopefully, we all were able to celebrate, laugh, and love — to raise our spirits in joy because we’ve made it, as Sunna has made it, to this time of light and warmth.

This is the time to acknowledge the good and revel in it in order to store up the strength needed to do the hard work of the coming harvest and preparation for winter — both of which are right around the corner.

Hard work that is constantly necessary in order to ensure that the work of the next season can be done successfully.  Hard work and a capacity to see the big picture, to play the long game.

This is something our ancestors knew as they worked for the continued life and growth of their families, their clans, and their tribes.

This is something that Freyja knows as Mistress of the Brisingamen and Receiver of Half of the Slain.  This is something Oðinn, the Hangatýr and Fjölsviðr, knows as he prepares for Ragnarök.

The Rune-Gild, with its Odian approach, does its best to understand this as well.  Whether we are looking to the past in order to find what is thought lost, to the future in order to help our tradition live fully within what manifests under Skuld’s gaze, or to a bridging of the two, it is with consciousness of that long view that we work.

I think you’ll find that sensibility in the articles and reviews in this issue.

Again, let us know how we’re doing.  Let us know what you like or dislike and what you would like to see us address in future issues.

Lothar Tuppan
Editor-in Chief
Summer 2010
editor@runegild.org