The Rune Cast: a podcast about runes

The primary purpose of this project, a podcast in English about runes and runic research, was to provide the public with information about a popular topic it is all too easy to find misinformation about, especially online. Each episode was between 20 and 45 minutes long, sometimes including an interview and sometimes only featuring the project leader, Maja Bäckvall. The target audience was the general public with an interest in runes, and the podcast was made available through Uppsala Runic Forum’s website and could be downloaded through most podcasting apps. The web page also featured images and relevant links. Apart from the web page, the podcast had its own Twitter account, @RuneCastPod, where the project leader shared rune news and live tweeted runological seminars and the like.

The podcast was produced by one person, Maja Bäckvall, with technical help for the web page by Marco Bianchi at the Department of Scandinavian Languages, Uppsala University. Only the project leader was paid by the project and worked on it for the equivalent of 40% of a full-time position from the autumn of 2018 to the spring of 2019. Originally, ten episodes of the podcast were planned, but that turned out to be overly ambitious; at the time of writing, four episodes have been released. This was in part due to technical issues – waiting for equipment, redoing and rescheduling interviews, problems with podcasting apps – and in part due to illness during the project period. In this regard, the goals of the project were definitely not met, and the podcast will continue to be produced without funding, but with support from Uppsala Runic Forum and the Department of Scandiavian Languages.

With regards to reaching a new audience and disseminating information about runes and runic research, the project has been a success. At the time of writing, the Twitter account has 477 followers, and the page for each episode has on average about 1000 visitors. Of course, each visit did not necessarily result in listening to the episode, but it is an indication. Reactions to the podcast have been positive throughout: each new episode has been shared with strong recommendations on Twitter, several university lecturers have let us know that they will be using the podcast in their teaching, and Viking Age reenactors have said they will be changing their use of runes based on information from The Rune Cast. The podcast has an impact beyond its immediate listeners. One listener’s review on iTunes called it “[an] eloquent masterpiece of pedagogy” which is high praise indeed. The scope and tone of the podcast seems to have fit the audience perfectly; many comments have been about how well the balance between information and entertainment has worked.

In all, The Rune Cast appears to have filled a need for a informative, yet informal podcast about this topic. As project leader, I was slightly worried beforehand about reaching a high enough technical quality on the recordings and editing, but as it turns out, that is not an issue for most listeners as long as the contents are good. Both I as the host and producer and Marco Bianchi as the one responsible for getting the podcast online have learnt a lot about the process that we will be able to use in the future. For instance, we were not aware of how difficult it would be to get statistics on the number of listeners from iTunes, something we thought would be easy going in to the project. From a practical point of view, it should be added that the most important takeaway from this project is how vulnerable one-person projects are. If the sole person working on a project falls ill or loses their voice, everything grinds to a halt.

As stated before, The Rune Cast will continue after the funding has run out. It has a strong audience following and an important function as a source of information. Some technical issues still need to be worked out, as well as a balance between ambition and execution, but generally speaking, it has a been a successful project.
The Rune Cast can be found here: http://www.runforum.nordiska.uu.se/runecast/