Fjölsvinnsmál, Part 8: The Mountain That Heals the Sick

Daily Reckoning for Kaun — Tuesday, October 6, 2026

A woman who has long lain sick can climb the mountain and grow well. Today’s story gives healing a place in the landscape, while Kaun names the wound and Saint Faith’s feast recalls pilgrims seeking help for the sick.

Today’s Reckoning

● Weekday rune: Kaun ᚴ — ulcer

● Month and Moon: Haustmánuður, autumn month · lunar day 27 · last-quarter phase band · waning Moon

● Year: Year 13 of the nineteen-year cycle · Berkana ᛒ

● Season: Fourteen days after the autumn equinox; ten days after the September 26 Vetrnætr full moon

● Feast: Saint Faith, also called Sainte Foy, venerated at Conques

A mountain for the sick

Yesterday, Wind-Cold asked who made the hall. In Fjölsvinnsmál 35–40, he turns to the healing mountain and the women gathered there. Henry Adams Bellows translates the first exchange:

Now answer me, Fjolsvith, the question I ask,
For now the truth would I know:
What call they the mountain on which the maid
Is lying so lovely to see?

The guardian answers:

Lyfjaberg is it, and long shall it be
A joy to the sick and the sore;
For well shall grow each woman who climbs it,
Though sick full long she has lain.

Bellows renders the mountain’s name Hill of Healing in his note. The promise is unusually specific: women, prolonged sickness, and the act of climbing. The afflicted body participates in the journey toward its own recovery.

Wind-Cold then asks about the women seated at the mountain’s mistress’s knees. The guardian names nine:

Hlif is one named, Hlifthrasa another,
Thjothvara call they the third;
Bjort and Bleik, Blith and Frith,
Eir and Aurbotha.

His next question asks whether they aid those who give offerings. The answer makes their protection explicit:

Soon aid they all who offerings give
On the holy altars high;
And if danger they see for the sons of men,
Then each from ill do they guard.

The healing place contains a company of women who receive offerings and answer need. Eir, whom Snorri describes as an exceptionally good physician, appears among them. Their assistance gives the mountain’s promise a social and ritual form: people approach, make offerings, and receive protection.

Kaun: the wound that threatens life

The Norwegian rune poem, translated by Bruce Dickins, says:

Ulcer is fatal to children;
death makes a corpse pale.

Kaun brings bodily vulnerability into the reading. Its verse understands a wound as something capable of taking a life. Beside it, the mountain’s promise acquires urgency. The sick woman approaches with an affliction that has already kept her lying down.

Haustmánuður: tending life through the waning month

Autumn month and the waning Moon belong together in today’s reckoning. Lunar day 27 places Haustmánuður near its close; the next new moon falls on October 10. The calendar’s last-quarter band follows the astronomical last quarter on October 3.

At this autumn position, the reading turns toward preserving what must survive the winter: food, shelter, and the people depending upon them. A household’s provision includes the care that keeps its sick members alive. The poem makes that need visible in a woman whose strength must carry her toward help.

Berkana: the fresh young shrub

For the year’s birch rune, Dickins’s Icelandic translation gives:

Leafy twig
and little tree
and fresh young shrub.

Berkana supplies an image of living growth within the darkening year. Read beside the healing mountain, the young shrub gives recovery a bodily shape: life extending again after a period of weakness. Today’s seasonal care makes room for that possibility.

Saint Faith: the journey toward help

October 6 is Saint Faith’s feast. Medieval pilgrims traveled to Conques to venerate her relics. The twelfth-century Pilgrim’s Guide describes benefits granted there to healthy and sick visitors, praises a spring before the basilica, and names October 6 as her feast day.

Read alongside the poem, this Christian tradition offers a compelling comparison: a female sacred presence, a particular place, and a bodily journey undertaken in hope of assistance. The landscape becomes part of the relationship through which help is sought.

The body approaches its place of healing

Today’s reckoning gathers around the effort required to reach help. Kaun names mortal vulnerability. Late Haustmánuður turns care toward the winter ahead. Berkana holds the image of fresh growth, while Saint Faith’s pilgrimage tradition gives another historical form to the journey of the sick.

The mountain’s promise reaches the woman who has long been confined by illness. Around its mistress sits a company ready to answer offerings with aid. Her climb brings her weakness and hope into that relationship.

Tomorrow: the name that opens the gates

Tomorrow brings Hagall ᚼ and the story’s finale. The traveler’s questions turn toward who may enter, bringing his identity and the long-awaited meeting into view.

Sources

● Henry Adams Bellows, The Poetic Edda (1923), Svipdagsmol 51–56 and notes to 52 and 54, corresponding to Fjölsvinnsmál 35–40. Direct translation. Verse wording is retained; metrical divider marks are omitted. Wind-Cold and Much Knowing are the series’ English character names; names inside the quoted translation retain Bellows’s spelling. Bellows’s note refers to Snorri’s Gylfaginning 35 for Eir’s healing role.

● Bruce Dickins, Runic and Heroic Poems of the Old Teutonic Peoples (1915), Norwegian Kaun and Icelandic Bjarkan. Rune poems.

● Twelfth-century Pilgrim’s Guide, Conques passage, reproduced by the Conques-Marcillac tourism office.

● Portland lunar phases, 2026; supplied Galdorcraft Metonic table and calendar engine 0.7.3. October 6 calendar. Vetrnætr here follows the September 26 astronomical full moon used in this series.

Get the Galdorcraft Norse Runestav Calendar.