Where the objects are
The earliest securely dated inscriptions come from bog deposits in Denmark around the second century — a comb, a spearhead, a scabbard fitting, with a few characters each. The characters are already a settled system by then, which means the alphabet is older than anything we have carrying it.
The single most useful object is the Kylver stone from Gotland, around the year 400. It is a slab from a grave, and carved on it is the whole row, in order, apparently for its own sake — the earliest complete futhark anyone has found. It is why the sequence above is the sequence, rather than a modern arrangement.
The alphabet is named the way we name a keyboard: after its first six letters, f · u · þ · a · r · k.
Three ættir of eight
The row divides into three groups of eight, called ættir. The division is attested — inscriptions use it, and later cipher runes count group and position to encode a letter as two numbers — so it is structure rather than decoration.
| Ætt | Runes | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Freyr's ætt | ᚠ Fehu, ᚢ Uruz, ᚦ Thurisaz, ᚨ Ansuz, ᚱ Raidho, ᚲ Kenaz, ᚷ Gebo, ᚹ Wunjo | The first eight, and the ones that give the alphabet its name: f, u, þ, a, r, k, g, w. |
| Hagal's ætt | ᚺ Hagalaz, ᚾ Nauthiz, ᛁ Isa, ᛃ Jera, ᛇ Eihwaz, ᛈ Perthro, ᛉ Algiz, ᛊ Sowilo | The second eight, opening on hail and ice — the row's cold, obstructed middle. |
| Tyr's ætt | ᛏ Tiwaz, ᛒ Berkano, ᛖ Ehwaz, ᛗ Mannaz, ᛚ Laguz, ᛜ Ingwaz, ᛞ Dagaz, ᛟ Othala | The last eight, ending on inheritance. Named for the god whose own rune opens it. |
All twenty-four
| Name | Sound | Ætt | Name means | What the poems say | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ᚠ | Fehu | f | 1 | cattle, movable wealth | The Anglo-Saxon poem says wealth is a comfort to everyone, and that a man must share it freely if he wants judgement before the lord. |
| ᚢ | Uruz | u | 1 | aurochs, wild ox | The aurochs is fierce, horned above the moors, a proud creature that fights with its horns. It was still alive when the poem was written and extinct by 1627. |
| ᚦ | Thurisaz | þ | 1 | giant, thorn | The Anglo-Saxon poem reads it as a thorn: sharp to every warrior, evil to grasp. The Norse poems read the same rune as a giant. |
| ᚨ | Ansuz | a | 1 | a god, a mouth | The Norse poems name Odin outright; the Christianised Anglo-Saxon one turns it into the mouth as the source of speech and wisdom. |
| ᚱ | Raidho | r | 1 | riding, a journey | Riding is easy in the hall and much harder on the long road with a strong horse — a joke about the difference between planning and going. |
| ᚲ | Kenaz | k | 1 | torch, or an ulcer | The Anglo-Saxon poem gives a torch, pale and bright, burning where the nobles rest indoors. The Norse poems give a sore. |
| ᚷ | Gebo | g | 1 | a gift | A gift is an ornament and a support, and to the destitute it is subsistence. In a gift culture it is also an obligation. |
| ᚹ | Wunjo | w | 1 | joy | Joy belongs to the one who knows little sorrow, and who has prosperity and enough. Note how conditional the line is. |
| ᚺ | Hagalaz | h | 2 | hail | Hail is the whitest of grains, whirled from heaven and tossed by the wind, then turned to water. Damage that afterwards feeds the field. |
| ᚾ | Nauthiz | n | 2 | need, constraint | Need is narrow on the breast, and yet it often becomes a help and a salvation to the children of men if they heed it in time. |
| ᛁ | Isa | i | 2 | ice | Ice is very cold and immeasurably slippery; it glitters like glass, most like gems, a floor made of frost, fair to look at. |
| ᛃ | Jera | j | 2 | year, harvest | Harvest is a joy to men when the earth brings forth its fruits — the one rune whose whole meaning is that time had to pass. |
| ᛇ | Eihwaz | ï / æ | 2 | yew | The yew is rough outside and firm in the earth, a keeper of fire and a joy on the estate. It is also poisonous and lives a thousand years. |
| ᛈ | Perthro | p | 2 | unknown — possibly a dice cup | The one rune nobody has convincingly translated. The Anglo-Saxon poem mentions play and laughter in the hall, which is why the dice-cup guess persists. |
| ᛉ | Algiz | z | 2 | elk, or protection | The Anglo-Saxon poem describes elk-sedge, a marsh grass that wounds the hand of anyone who grasps it. |
| ᛊ | Sowilo | s | 2 | the sun | The sun is a hope to seafarers when they carry the ship over the fishes' bath until it brings them to land. |
| ᛏ | Tiwaz | t | 3 | the god Tyr | Tyr is a guiding star; it keeps faith well with princes, and is ever on its course over the mists of night, and never fails. Tyr is the god who lost his hand keeping a promise. |
| ᛒ | Berkano | b | 3 | birch | The birch bears no fruit, yet produces shoots without seed; its branches are beautiful, high on its crown, well covered with leaves. |
| ᛖ | Ehwaz | e | 3 | horse | The horse is a joy to princes in the presence of warriors, a steed proud in its hooves — and always described in relation to its rider. |
| ᛗ | Mannaz | m | 3 | man, humankind | The joyful man is dear to his kin, and yet every one must fail his fellow, since the lord by his decree commits the flesh to the earth. |
| ᛚ | Laguz | l | 3 | water, a lake | Water seems unending to men if they venture on an unsteady ship, and the sea-waves frighten them, and the sea-steed does not heed its bridle. |
| ᛜ | Ingwaz | ŋ | 3 | the god Ing | Ing was first seen by men among the East Danes, until he departed eastwards over the wave, his wagon following after. |
| ᛞ | Dagaz | d | 3 | day | Day is the lord's messenger, dear to men, the great light of the creator, a joy and a hope to rich and poor and of service to all. |
| ᛟ | Othala | o | 3 | inherited land, estate | An estate is very dear to every man if he can enjoy there in his house whatever is right and proper in constant prosperity. |
What happened to the alphabet afterwards
It did not stand still. In Scandinavia the twenty-four shrank to the sixteen of the Younger Futhark during the Viking Age — fewer letters for more sounds, which is a strange direction for a writing system and is still argued about. In England it grew instead, to as many as thirty-three characters in the Anglo-Saxon futhorc, to cover sounds the older row could not.
Runes were also not replaced overnight by the Latin alphabet. They carried on in parallel for centuries — on grave markers, on ownership tags, on a famous quantity of medieval wooden sticks from Bergen carrying trade notes, prayers and obscenities.
The rune poems, and what they are not
Three poems survive that gloss the rune names, and they are the source for almost everything said about individual runes.
- The Anglo-Saxon rune poem, the only one covering the whole row and then some. Its manuscript burned in a library fire in 1731; it survives because it had been printed in 1705.
- The Norwegian and Icelandic poems, later still, shorter, and covering the sixteen of the Younger Futhark.
They are mnemonics. Each stanza describes the thing the rune's name means so the reader remembers the letter — hail is cold, ice is slippery, the aurochs is fierce. There is no fortune-telling in them, and no instruction for casting anything.
The honest history of rune divination
The usual citation is Tacitus, writing about Germanic peoples in the year 98: a branch cut into strips, marked with signs, scattered on a white cloth, and lifted three times while looking at the sky. It is a real account of casting lots. It is also earlier than any attested rune, and Tacitus does not say the marks were letters.
Between that and the twentieth century there is no continuous tradition of reading runes as a divinatory set. What exists today was largely assembled in the 1980s: Ralph Blum's The Book of Runes, 1982, which supplied the layouts, the reversed meanings and the modern interpretations that most rune sites still reproduce. It also introduced the blank rune — which appears on no historical inscription, in no rune poem, and on no object in any museum.
None of that makes the practice worthless. It makes it modern, which is a different claim from the one usually made for it, and the difference is exactly the kind of thing this site exists to state.
The appropriation, said plainly
Runes were taken up by German nationalist occultism from the early twentieth century — Guido von List published an invented set of eighteen "Armanen" runes in 1902, presented as an older and truer alphabet. It was not; he made it up. That strand fed directly into Nazi symbolism, where a doubled Sowilo became the SS insignia, and where several other characters acquired uses they had never had.
Two of the runes on this page — Algiz ᛉ and Othala ᛟ — are still used as identifiers by far-right groups today. Saying so is not a warning against the alphabet, which belongs to everybody who reads about it. It is context anybody using these characters in public should have, and leaving it out would be the dishonest choice.