Runes of the Elder Futhark

The rune poems

Three survive — Anglo-Saxon, Norwegian and Icelandic. The Anglo-Saxon poem has a verse for each of the 24 Elder Futhark runes and for five later English additions; the Norwegian and Icelandic poems cover the 16 runes of the Younger Futhark. They are the oldest surviving explanations of what the rune names meant, and they predate every interpretation written since.

Read a verse against its modern meaning and the difference is often stark. The medieval version tends to be blunter and more practical than the spiritual reading that replaced it: Fehu is about cattle, wealth and the obligation to share it, not about abundance mindset.

Every rune page quotes its verses in the original and in Bruce Dickins’s edition and translation of all three poems (Cambridge, 1915).

What is source and what is reconstruction

Deity and tree correspondences are not attested medieval practice. They were largely assembled in the twentieth century by writers systematizing the runes into a modern occult framework — useful as a mnemonic, but not evidence of how the runes were used.

The poems are source material. The correspondence tables are interpretation. Keeping the two apart is the difference between studying a tradition and inventing one.

The runes that cannot be reversed

Nine of the 24 look exactly the same after a half-turn — Gebo, Hagalaz, Nauthiz, Isa, Jera, Eihwaz, Sowilo, Ingwaz and Dagaz — so a rune drawn upside down cannot be told apart from one drawn upright. Any source offering you a reversed Isa is not looking at the shape.

Readers disagree about what to do with them. Seven are read upright only here; Nauthiz and Eihwaz keep the reversed readings given in many modern rune books, which treat the way the stave falls rather than its outline. That leaves 17 of the 24 with a reversed meaning. Reversals themselves are a twentieth-century convention: the medieval rune poems have none.

Why they are grouped in eights

The row divides into three aettir, each named for a god. Freyr's eight cover the material world; Heimdall's cover disruption and necessity; Tyr's cover society and inheritance. The grouping itself is old: sixth-century gold bracteates, such as the one from Vadstena in Sweden, already split the row into three groups of eight. The god names for the groups came much later.

Reversals and the daily draw

Only some runes have a reversed reading. Nine look the same upside down, and seven of them — Gebo, Hagalaz, Isa, Jera, Sowilo, Ingwaz and Dagaz — are read upright only here. The rune-of-the-day figures on each rune page are exact rather than estimated: the daily draw is derived from the date, so the whole year can be worked out in advance.

From the Elder to the Younger Futhark

Around 800 CE the 24-rune Elder Futhark contracted to the 16-rune Younger Futhark — fewer symbols for more sounds, just as the spoken language was growing more complex. Eight runes were dropped outright, and several of the survivors changed shape or sound. That transition is the closest thing to a documented history these symbols have.

Runes were writing first

Before anything else, the futhark was an alphabet. Each rune carries a sound, and surviving inscriptions are largely names, ownership marks and memorials rather than prophecy. Divinatory use is documented — Tacitus describes a Germanic lot-casting practice in the first century — but the elaborate systems sold today were largely reconstructed in the twentieth.