Actually there are a lot more people involved in the making of this deck but it seemed appropriate to name these three as the designer, the artist and the writer.  Odin's Rune Cards can be purchased as a deck and book set or just the deck can be purchased separately.  You can also order just the book if you prefer.

There are several different rune card decks but they all essentially fall into two types:  cards which are attractive and *show* the rune, drawn...... and cards which feature scenes acting out the meaning of the rune.  In a way, this reminds me of the two different types of tarot decks, those with scenes on the Minors and those with just pip cards.  I guess in some way, runes are essentially like the suit cards.  The Odin's Rune Cards fall into the first category, because the cards are simply graphically pleasing illustrations of the rune itself.

The cards are quite attractive and are made to resemble a stone carved tablet with  an oval stone set in the center.  The center stone features the rune "carved" on it and filled in with red color; this is embossed on the card so if you close your eyes and run your finger over it, with familiarity with the deck, you could tell which rune it was.  I'm not saying it's embossed deeply enough for a vision-impaired person to use, but some might be able to.  There are two bands across the stone, with the name of the rune spelled out and a keyword meaning of the rune also spelled out.  They are written in what looks like runic letters but it is a sort of "pig rune" (remember pig latin?) because the rune which *resembles* a letter is used for that letter, even though in the runic alphabet it may actually mean a different letter.  The "P" is a perfect example of this.  In the runic alphabet, the rune which *looks* like a "P" is actualy the rune for the letter "W", but in the spelled out names and keywords, it would be used to represent the letter "P".  For some reason, however, this seems appropriate in this deck.

Above the bands with the title, there are "carved" symbols filled in with red, these change according to the rune itself and represent a neolithic-looking enactment of the meaning of the rune.  One example of this is the rune Jera, which means Harvest, and is illustrated with a little petroglyph of a man with a spiral on his chest and holding a spiral tray up over his head which represents the harvest being brought home to the table.  There is also a border of runic carving and norse dragons or serpents.

Since this is not a tarot deck, there are no Major or Minor Arcana.  There are 24 cards in the deck.  This deck does *not* use the Blum-inspired convention of having a "blank" rune in the deck.  The cards themselves are short and stocky and printed on a heavy card stock which does not flex at all when you use them.  There is almost a feel of handling thin boards or tablets.  The edges feel like they have originally (at the publishers) been punched out of a sheet using perforations, because there are little nubby spots all around the edges.  The corners are rounded.  The back design is very simple but very attractive, it has the same brown stone look to it all over, with a red petroglyphic rendition of a man on a horse.  This is not reversible; however, with rune cards, it's rarely necessary to use reversals.  I have seen some systems use reversals but not many.  There is no little white booklet but the Quick Reference Guide which comes with it has descriptive meanings and has even got 4 spreads.  I would bet that the book has a lot more information on the runes themselves, but I didn't have access to it at the time of this review.

If you are the kind of person who is used to working with runes and just wants a card version of something you're already familiar with, this is one of the nicest renditions of the rune decks I have seen, but it does not have scenes in it so it might be harder to learn from if you are a beginner.  With the book, however, it would probably be fine.  I like the fact that the cards don't bend (despite my usual preference for flexible cards) because for runes it sort of hearkens back to the rune tablets themselves.  I don't know, just a tactile preference I guess.

Click here for pictures

or here to return

Please use your browser's back button to return from pictures

Review Copyright 2000 by Gina M. Pace

Odin's Rune Cards by Connie Gage, Bill Scott, and Cheryl Barnes, 1995
published by Music Design, a division of Narada Media
ISBN 0-934245-34-7