Runesong is a story cycle of which Book Four is recently completed. It has been two decades since Thiot (Book One) was first written. It concluded then with the translator's note that opens Book Two which was written during the course of a winter some fifteen years later. Since the conception of the story, the study of the historical, cultural, and mythological background that comprises Book Three has occupied me, yet this obviously is not a scholarly work. Nevertheless I have provided a new literal translation of the main Icelandic sources, and otherwise identified works that are more or less directly cited in the text.
         As the tale is now done, here it is told complete. It is meant to be read aloud, acted out even, accompanied by large images and symphonic sound, in an epic outdoors performance perhaps. A Music Folio provides the music for the songs that are embedded (with the lines centered) in the text. Let it be said that they have sung themselves to me and each has been played into the world and thus is a living melody. This is for my family and my friends who have shared this story for so long in sometimes unexpected ways, and who each may find something of themselves in these pages.

Faust, 1998