The Heliand
A Gospel From The North
A long time ago, secret runes started to grow in the people’s hearts.
They would catch each other’s eye, and they would know this about the other.
They recognised something. They shone.
Down in the fertile darkness of themselves, something wonderful was happening.
And from such secrets a story wished to announce itself. One slow rune at a time the story started to form, one luminous truth after another. .
These runes were Christ-lettered, spelling out the achievement of what King Jesus had accomplished. The wise jostled in their excitement to praise him, to create a bright-book that laid out how to live. This was not an unusual reaction. But in the end it would fall to four to receive the spirit and the strength to do it.
It was a heroic age, and from such a time emerged Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
God had a spell you see.
The spell was one of both power and wisdom, and these men were worthy of relaying his incant. In a world of cheap tricks, there was nothing like the Godspell. The dear Chieftain crafted it to fell both demon and sorcerer, to unpick the weave of wickedness, to wither all acts of wallop and malice.
And the spell was to be a song.
So, something rather special today. This isn’t a note from a young Tolkien’s journal, or footnotes of an Icelandic saga, what we have here is the beginning of a song well over a thousand years old. An epic Christian poem.