Jera
The Good Season
The rune of the year and its harvest, the earth bringing forth bright crops for rich and poor alike.
Reconstructed as *jēra-, from Old English gēr and Old Norse ár. All three poems gloss it, because the Younger Futhark kept the rune as ár, though with a different sound value. The Old English calls the year men's hope, when God, the holy king of heaven, lets the earth give bright fruits to rich and poor alike, the one stanza in the poem to insist on that last point. The Icelandic is terser: a boon to men, a good summer, a field grown through. The Norwegian agrees and reaches for a legendary king, saying that Fróði was generous. The rune names a cycle completed rather than an event, the season come round and yielded.
Light
A harvest that arrives is the plainest good in any of the poems, and the English stanza hands it to rich and poor alike. What the year returns, it returns to everyone who waited out its length.
Shadow
The year cannot be hurried, and the stanza treats the crop as granted rather than earned. The same cycle that fills a field is the one that leaves it empty until the season comes round again.
