Elder Futhark rune meanings
All twenty-four runes with their names, sounds and readings — and, unusually, an honest note on each about how much of the meaning is attested and how much was written in the twentieth century.
Why these pages grade their own evidence
The Elder Futhark is attested from roughly the 2nd to 8th centuries. The rune poems that give us meanings are far later — Old English (8th–10th c.), Old Norwegian (13th c.), Old Icelandic (15th c.) — and they describe the Younger Futhark or the Anglo-Saxon futhorc rather than the Elder Futhark directly. Most rune pages present modern divinatory meanings as ancient ones. These do not: each rune reports what the poems actually say, and is graded well attested, partly reconstructed or largely modern.
Freyr's aett
| Rune | Name | Means | Reading | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ᚠ | Fehuf | cattle, movable wealth | Wealth that must keep moving | well attested |
| ᚢ | Uruzu | aurochs, wild ox | Untamed strength that answers to nobody | well attested |
| ᚦ | Thurisazth | giant, or thorn | A sharp force better not grasped | well attested |
| ᚨ | Ansuza | a god, one of the Aesir | Divine breath carried as speech | partly reconstructed |
| ᚱ | Raidhor | riding, journey | The ordered journey, not the arrival | well attested |
| ᚲ | Kenazk | torch, or ulcer | Controlled fire, or the fire in a wound | partly reconstructed |
| ᚷ | Gebog | gift | A gift that binds both parties | well attested |
| ᚹ | Wunjow | joy, delight | Ease among your own people | well attested |
Heimdall's aett
| Rune | Name | Means | Reading | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ᚺ | Hagalazh | hail, hailstone | Hail: damage that melts into water | well attested |
| ᚾ | Nauthizn | need, hardship, distress | Need that teaches before it releases | well attested |
| ᛁ | Isai | ice | Ice: a hard, beautiful, treacherous stillness | well attested |
| ᛃ | Jeraj | year, harvest, good season | The year's turn, earned and awaited | well attested |
| ᛇ | Eihwazei | yew tree | The yew: hard, poisonous, long-lived, useful | partly reconstructed |
| ᛈ | Perthrop | unknown | A word nobody has managed to translate | largely modern |
| ᛉ | Algizz | elk, or protection | Elk-sedge: a defence that cuts both ways | partly reconstructed |
| ᛊ | Sowilos | sun | The sun as a navigator's landmark | well attested |
Tyr's aett
| Rune | Name | Means | Reading | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ᛏ | Tiwazt | the god Týr; god | Justice upheld at personal cost | well attested |
| ᛒ | Berkanob | birch, birch twig | Quiet growth before anything shows | well attested |
| ᛖ | Ehwaze | horse | Two moving as one, mutual trust | well attested |
| ᛗ | Mannazm | man, human being | The human, seen among other humans | well attested |
| ᛚ | Laguzl | water, sea, lake | Water: crossing, depth and dread | well attested |
| ᛜ | Ingwazng | Ing, a god's name | Stored potential, work not yet visible | partly reconstructed |
| ᛞ | Dagazd | day, daylight | Daybreak; a threshold already crossed | well attested |
| ᛟ | Othalao | inherited land, estate | What is inherited and must be kept | well attested |
Frequently asked questions
Which rune meanings are we actually sure about?
Roughly three quarters. A rune's meaning is considered solid when linguists can reconstruct its name confidently and a surviving rune poem addresses it — Fehu as cattle, Uruz as the aurochs, Sowilo as the sun. Others are thinner: nobody knows for certain what Perthro's name meant, and Eihwaz and Ingwaz are argued over. Each page here grades its own evidence rather than presenting everything as equally certain.
How old are the rune meanings?
Older than the poems, but not as old as the alphabet. The Elder Futhark is attested from roughly the 2nd to 8th centuries in inscriptions. The rune poems that give us meanings are much later — Old English from the 8th to 10th centuries, Old Norwegian from the 13th, Old Icelandic from the 15th — and they describe the Younger Futhark or the Anglo-Saxon futhorc rather than the Elder Futhark directly.
Did the Vikings use runes for divination?
Tacitus describes Germanic tribes casting marked strips of wood and reading them, writing in the first century AD, and there are later scattered references. But no source describes a system resembling modern rune casting, with reversals and spreads. That system is a twentieth-century construction, largely built after Ralph Blum's 1982 book, and the honest position is that it is modern practice using ancient letters.
Why are only some runes reversible?
Because nine of the twenty-four are symmetrical: turned upside down they look identical. Gebo, Hagalaz, Isa, Jera, Eihwaz, Sowilo, Ingwaz and Dagaz cannot be reversed, and Wunjo depends on the carving. Readers who work with reversals treat those as having a merkstave or shadow reading drawn from context rather than orientation.
What are the three aettir?
The twenty-four runes are traditionally divided into three groups of eight, called aettir, conventionally named for Freyr, Heimdall and Tyr. The division itself is genuinely old and appears on inscriptions. The god names attached to each group are a later convention rather than something the sources state.