Elder Futhark · Heimdall's aett · rune 13 of 24
ᛇEihwaz
The yew: hard, poisonous, long-lived, useful.
- Name means
- yew tree
- Sound
- ei
- Aett
- Heimdall's aett
- Evidence
- partly reconstructed
What Eihwaz means
The reconstructed name means yew, and the yew is a strange tree to build a symbol on. It is poisonous in nearly every part, it holds its green through winter, individual trees outlast dynasties, and its wood is springy enough to make the best bows in Europe. Germanic peoples planted it among burials long before churchyards existed. The rune is rare in surviving inscriptions and its sound value is genuinely unclear, so editors transcribe it as i-diaeresis or ae for want of anything better. What survives is the tree, not a doctrine about it.
What the rune poems actually say
The Old English poem has a stanza for eoh, the yew: a tree rough on the outside, hard and fast in the earth, keeper of fire and a pleasure on the homestead. That is the closest thing to direct evidence, and it belongs to the Anglo-Saxon futhorc rather than the Elder Futhark. The Norwegian and Icelandic poems have stanzas for yr, which by then meant bow or yew, but that rune descends from Algiz, not from this one. The threads have crossed.
Evidence rating: partly reconstructed — Name reconstructed by linguists, but the poems are thin or ambiguous.
In a casting
Readers place Eihwaz at the axis of a spread: endurance, the long view, and passage between one state and another. Its familiar association with death is handled as transformation rather than as an event, and the yew's double role as poison and bow-wood supports a reading of defence through sheer hardiness. It is generally taken as a rune of slow, purposeful persistence.
Reversed
With hooks at both ends turning opposite ways, Eihwaz looks the same when rotated, and it is one of the nine held to have no reverse. Read as merkstave in a difficult spread, it becomes endurance hardened into stubbornness: a position held well past its use.
Frequently asked questions
What does the Eihwaz rune mean?
The reconstructed name means yew, and the yew is a strange tree to build a symbol on. It is poisonous in nearly every part, it holds its green through winter, individual trees outlast dynasties, and its wood is springy enough to make the best bows in Europe. Germanic peoples planted it among burials long before churchyards existed. The rune is rare in surviving inscriptions and its sound value is genuinely unclear, so editors transcribe it as i-diaeresis or ae for want of anything better. What survives is the tree, not a doctrine about it.
What do the rune poems say about Eihwaz?
The Old English poem has a stanza for eoh, the yew: a tree rough on the outside, hard and fast in the earth, keeper of fire and a pleasure on the homestead. That is the closest thing to direct evidence, and it belongs to the Anglo-Saxon futhorc rather than the Elder Futhark. The Norwegian and Icelandic poems have stanzas for yr, which by then meant bow or yew, but that rune descends from Algiz, not from this one. The threads have crossed.
What does Eihwaz mean reversed?
With hooks at both ends turning opposite ways, Eihwaz looks the same when rotated, and it is one of the nine held to have no reverse. Read as merkstave in a difficult spread, it becomes endurance hardened into stubbornness: a position held well past its use.