Mannaz
Augmentation of the Dust
The rune of man: company is the whole of the good here, and every poem sets it beside the grave.
The reconstructed *mannaz survives as Old English mon, Old Norse maðr and Gothic manna. The Old English poem grants that a man is dear to his kinsmen, then states that each must fail his fellow, since the Lord commits the flesh to the earth by his decree. The Norwegian poem is barer still: man is an augmentation of the dust, and great is the claw of the hawk. The Icelandic opens warmly, calling man the delight of man, a phrase the Hávamál also uses, before adding the same augmentation of the dust and, oddly, the adorner of ships. Readings of this letter as the self, or as the divine within humanity, belong to twentieth-century rune books.
Light
Company is the whole of the good here. Man is the delight of man in the Icelandic poem and dear to his kinsmen in the Old English, and nothing in either gloss says more than that.
Shadow
Every version ends in the ground. Man augments the dust, the hawk's claw is great, and the Old English poem says plainly that each will fail his fellow when the flesh is committed to the earth.
