Upright
Communication, insight and messages. Words that carry weight — advice worth taking, or a truth arriving through speech.
Rune 4 of 24 · Freyr's Aett
ᚨ Ansuz
Ansuz is rune 4 of the 24 in the Elder Futhark, in Freyr's Aett, and carries the sound A. It means “A god, Odin, the mouth”. Upright: Communication, insight and messages. Words that carry weight — advice worth taking, or a truth arriving through speech. Reversed: Miscommunication, deception, or advice that should not be trusted. That reading exists for 17 of the 24 runes; the other 7 are symmetrical or read upright only.
Reversed
Miscommunication, deception, or advice that should not be trusted.
Position in the row4 of 24
AettFreyr's Aett
SoundA
Literal meaningA god, Odin, the mouth
ElementAir
Can be reversedYes
Ansuz is the 4th rune of the Elder Futhark and belongs to Freyr's Aett. Before it meant anything divinatory it was a letter, carrying the A sound.
Primary source
What the rune poem says
The mouth is the source of all language, a pillar of wisdom and a comfort to wise men, a blessing and a joy to every knight.
— 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
Ansuz by the numbers
Position in the row
4 of 24
Odds of drawing it
1 in 24 · 4.17%
Rune of the day in 2026
10 times · 2.74%
Reversed on those days
40%
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: 6 Mar, 31 Mar, 9 Apr, 21 Apr, 10 May, 5 Jun, 20 Jul, 2 Aug
What happened to it
Ansuz after the Elder Futhark
In the Younger Futhark
Survived as óss, but the meaning drifted from god to river mouth or estuary as Christianity spread.
Worth knowing
The Anglo-Saxon futhorc split it into three separate runes to cover changing vowel sounds.
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
AHN-sooz
Deity
Odin
Tree
Ash
Element
Air
Ansuz sits in Freyr's Aett, position 4 of the row, and carries the A sound. Its literal meaning is a god, odin, the mouth — which is where every later reading of it starts.
The poem above is a source; this table is twentieth-century reconstruction.