Heilung | Anoana

This song’s “chorus” has been earworming me for weeks now.

I figure someone (or my brain) is trying to tell me something. I honestly cannot shake it from my head. Bedtime. Cooking meals. Showers. Work. What have you.

Aelwao anoana tuwatuwa
Tau liiu anoana tuwatuwa

The song is composed of runic inscriptions carved on protective amulets, or bracteates, according to several sources (including Heilung’s Bandcamp page). Other sites say that the above is likely untranslatable. The argument is that the phrases from the amulets are probably encoded spells.

The video is a new find for me: I wasn’t aware one had been made for the song until this morning. It is in the vein of videos I like far more than most that have been produced in recent years — it has an actual story tied into it, which is what (to me) music videos are meant to be — not clean-copy concert footage or people milling about doing things unrelated to the lyrics.

Anyway, perhaps my earworm will become yours.