Today is Reið ᚱ: riding, movement, journey and the carrying forward of what has already begun.
The moon is almost spent, a waning crescent at the end of Heyannir, the Hay Month. In two days the new moon opens Tvímánuður. We are also still within the Lammas harvest tide: summer’s growth is no longer simply standing in the field. It is being cut, gathered, transported, ground and transformed.
Over the larger cycle remains Berkana ᛒ, Metonic Year 13 — growth and what continues to emerge from what has already been brought forth.
All of those movements converge in today’s continuation of Gróttasöngr.
Yesterday belonged to Áss: Fenja and Menja sang, and their voices changed what Grótti produced. They called for an army against Fróði.
Today, under Reið, the thing summoned by the song moves into the world.
The sea-king Mýsingr comes. Fróði is killed, his kingdom is plundered, and the long Peace of Fróði ends. Mýsingr then takes Fenja, Menja and the mill Grótti away with him by sea.
Reið appears everywhere: the army comes, a ruler falls, wealth changes hands, the women are displaced, and the Grinder itself begins another journey.
But the waning moon warns that this movement is carrying something toward an ending.
Mýsingr makes the same mistake as the ruler before him. He commands the women to grind again.
This time he asks for salt.
And the women begin to sing.
Today’s reckoning is therefore not simply “travel.” It is consequence in motion. Yesterday the voice set something loose. Today Reið carries it forward.
And the journey is not finished.
ᚱ Reið · ᛒ Berkana
August 10 is also St. Lawrence’s Day, a major medieval feast that became an important late-summer marker on Scandinavian calendar staves. Lawrence was remembered as the keeper of his church’s treasures who, when ordered to surrender them to Roman authorities, instead presented the poor as its true wealth; tradition says he was then executed by fire on a gridiron, which became his identifying symbol. His feast falls directly into the northern harvest season, when the year’s wealth is being gathered, stored, and redistributed. That gives another layer to today’s Reið ᚱ reckoning: wealth does not remain still. In the Song of Grótti, Fróði’s accumulated prosperity is taken from him and carried away; in Lawrence’s legend, earthly authority demands possession of wealth and discovers that its value cannot be controlled so easily. Today the road belongs not only to travelers, but to what changes hands and where it goes next.
References: Gróttasöngr (“The Song of Grótti”); Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál 43.
Image reference: the carved human head decorating the Oseberg chariot from the Oseberg ship burial in Norway.
