Berkana!
Bjarkan, Beorc, Bjork…no, I’m not muttering gibberish! I refer of course to the “B” rune of the Elder and Younger Futharks. Its literal meaning is “birch”. Amongst its esoteric, and inferred/debated meanings are: birth (and womanly things), gestation, growing, motherhood, feminine power, nurturing, growth, etcetera…you get the general idea.
In the Younger Futhark, the “Futhorc” as it’s called, the B does double duty as P as well.
The initials of my given name are M-L-P (which I share with My Little Pony! Fun fact!). I noticed this multi-function of Beorc when tooling with the idea of drawing up my initials using the Futhorc. Interestingly, Beorc is also used in place of “mp”. I’m assuming that’s for words like “lamp”. More interestingly, Beorc is used in place of “mb”. I assume for words like “lamb”. This is relevant because I’ve also used an alias for a lot of my creative work that has the initials MB. I even have a signature that I designed to be read as MB or MP or MLP…
Had I only known the versatility of Beorc, I could have just used that one rune and called it a day! Haha! How weird is that?
It’s also kind of cool because one can make out the (English) letters M, L, and P quite easily within the B rune’s design.
Artwork by your very own, Levi Levy Sheppard. I like how it turned out. Considering doing the entirety of the Futhark and Futhorc in this style. Thoughts?
