Here is our hearth fire, the burning place. Food, warmth, community. The fire lit to greet the spirits of place, for this is their home, and we are their guests. This is our rhythm, the rhythm of riding. Rīdaną, rīdaną, rīdaną. Dictated by rainfall and the migration of the herds across the Eurasian steppe. We are followers, wanderers – and we are never alone. The land speaks to us. The stars guide us. The Sun, the Moon, the planets – they are like us: wanderers kindling flames upon the sky-roads. In a world that is vast they are as close as kin. We are the riders of time and space.
The Yamnaya were the fourth genetic contributor to the ancient European peoples. After an ice age lasting nearly 15,000 years they followed trails laid long ago, bringing their beliefs, and their language (Proto Indo European), into the western expanse of Europe. Here they meet settled farming populations, made up, themselves from three major migrations: the Ancient Western Europeans hunter gatherers who settled before the Ice Age, some 40,00 years ago, the Anatolian Neolithic peoples who brought farming to the continent over 30,000 years later and the Caucasus peoples who already shared ancestry with their Anatolian cousins and the Yamnaya.
The hunter-gatherer Yanmaya meet their genetic cousins; farmers for whom the concept of ‘hearth’ itself has changed. Round houses and pit-houses built around a central fire, the flame fixed, the place named as home.
The Yamnaya bring, amongst other things, the art of metal-working and pit-burials where the dead are dusted in red ochre, laid to rest with goods and dismantled wagons and covered in great mounds. The living wander like the planets, but the dead are fixed stars upon the landscape. The Yamnaya also bring an offering that shapes their story, and our story, forever – their language.
It is another 2,500 years before the linguistic landscape solidifies. Is it a peace-weaving? A warring? A space of collaboration or of conflict? Probably both: the way is a winding one after all. Proto-Germanic emerges: Raidho, Raidho, Raidho. Not just riding, but the journey, remembered trackways – a mapping of the land and the weaving of meaning through time. More and more humans sink their roots into place, building homes and evolving rules of hospitality that keep the energy of the road vibrant and alive. Warp threads of home, weft threads of wayfaring. Our life blood is trade, our currency is story.
This moment of unity, of shared linguistic identity is brief – less than 1,000 years. Proto-Germanic evolves again and again, into languages including English, German, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic and Faeroese.
We are settling, as the ash settles after the flames. Our individual threads grow more vibrant, more distinct.
Ræið, ræið ,ræið (Old Norse) ‘raiyth’
Reið, reið , reið (Old Icelandic) ‘rayth’
Rad, Rad, Rad (Anglo-Saxon) ‘rad’
Finally, the word road evolves from that Anglo-Saxon root. This is the road the ancestors followed, and upon which we now stand and continue the journey.
You may, or may not, descend from this great migration but, if you understand what I am saying right now you are part of that ancient soul road, sāwol rad, saiwalō rīdaną. You are part of its evolution.
My name is Maggie Rose Cunningham and I have been travelling this road for more than 30 years. It has taken me deep into the healing and wisdom of the runes (Raidho being the fifth rune in the Proto Germanic ‘futhark’ or alphabet). It has led me to journey into the other worlds of Yggdrasil, the northern world tree. It has led me to seek the runes in the practice of northern astrology. It has led me to trace the path of the magical self upon these soul roads: the healers, magicians, mystics, seers, sages. Once, long ago, they bore titles like leodrune, volva, vitki, helrune.
You are welcome at my hearth which, like the Yamnaya fires of old is not located in one physical space but in a newly birthed world known as the internet. When we seek the old roads, we are also building new ones.
