Upright
Protection and a warning heeded in time. The strongest defensive rune in the row.
Rune 15 of 24 · Heimdall's Aett
ᛉ Algiz
Algiz is rune 15 of the 24 in the Elder Futhark, in Heimdall's Aett, and carries the sound Z. It means “Elk, protection”. Upright: Protection and a warning heeded in time. The strongest defensive rune in the row. Reversed: Vulnerability, or protection refused. A warning missed. That reading exists for 17 of the 24 runes; the other 7 are symmetrical or read upright only.
Reversed
Vulnerability, or protection refused. A warning missed.
Position in the row15 of 24
AettHeimdall's Aett
SoundZ
Literal meaningElk, protection
ElementAir
Can be reversedYes
Algiz is the 15th rune of the Elder Futhark and belongs to Heimdall's Aett. Before it meant anything divinatory it was a letter, carrying the Z sound.
Primary source
What the rune poem says
The elk-sedge is mostly to be found in a marsh; it grows in the water and makes a ghastly wound, covering with blood every warrior who touches it.
— Anglo-Saxon rune poem, recorded around the 8th–10th century
Where the rune poems come from and why the medieval reading is often blunter than the modern one — explained once on the main page.
Calculated
Algiz by the numbers
Position in the row
15 of 24
Odds of drawing it
1 in 24 · 4.17%
Rune of the day in 2026
16 times · 4.38%
Reversed on those days
19%
Can be reversed
Yes
Of the 24 runes, only 17 have a reversed reading — 71% of the row. Four are symmetrical and cannot be turned over at all, and 3 more are conventionally read upright only.
The rune-of-the-day figures are exact rather than estimated. Our daily draw is derived from the date, so the whole year can be computed — which a site with a random draw cannot do.
Days it falls in 2026: 7 Jan, 13 Jan, 18 Jan, 24 Jan, 30 Jan, 12 Feb, 25 Feb, 4 Apr
What happened to it
Algiz after the Elder Futhark
In the Younger Futhark
Survived, but upside down, as ýr — the same shape inverted, standing for yew and the R sound.
Worth knowing
One of the strangest transitions in the row: the rune flipped and changed sound entirely.
Around 800 CE the 24-rune Elder Futhark contracted to the 16-rune Younger Futhark — fewer symbols for more sounds, at exactly the point the language was growing more complex. Eight runes were dropped outright. Which ones survived, and how they changed, is the closest thing to a documented history these symbols have.
Traditional associations
Pronounced
AL-geez
Deity
Heimdall and the Valkyries
Tree
Yew
Element
Air
Algiz sits in Heimdall's Aett, position 15 of the row, and carries the Z sound. Its literal meaning is elk, protection — which is where every later reading of it starts.
The poem above is a source; this table is twentieth-century reconstruction.