Kostbera- Norse FigureMortal

The Tampered Runes

In the Atlamál, Atli sent a messenger named Vingi to invite Gunnar and Högni to his hall. Guðrún, Atli's wife and the brothers' sister, suspected treachery and carved warning runes into the message. Vingi scraped them away and carved new letters over the old. When the message reached Högni's hall, Kostbera took the rune-stick and read it by firelight. She was skilled in runes, and what she saw troubled her. The letters were wrong. Beneath the surface marks she could make out the shapes of older carvings, half-erased. The original message warned of death.

She told Högni what the runes said beneath their altered surface. He shrugged it off.

The Dreams Högni Would Not Hear

That night Kostbera dreamed. A river burst through the hall and swept over the benches. A bear broke through the door, swinging its paws so that none could escape. Then an eagle flew through the house dripping blood, and she knew it wore Atli's shape. Each dream she told to Högni when he woke. Each time he offered a mild reading: the river was grain spilling from the storehouse, the bear only a coming snowstorm.

Glaumvör, Gunnar's wife, dreamed the same kind of warnings in the same hall on the same night. Neither woman could stop what was coming. Högni and Gunnar rode to Atli's court. Vingi, at the last, confessed that he had altered the runes. They killed him on the spot, but they did not turn back. At Atli's hall, the trap closed. Gunnar died in a snake pit. Högni died with his heart cut from his chest. Everything Kostbera read in the runes and saw in her sleep came true.