Hagalaz upright
Disruption from outside, arriving uninvited. Hail destroys the crop and waters the ground — the damage and the clearing are the same event.
Rune 9 of 24 · Heimdall's Aett
ᚺ Hagalaz rune meaning
Hagalaz rune meaning: disruption from outside, arriving uninvited. Its name is read as “hail”; it is rune 9 of 24, in Heimdall's Aett, with the sound h. The shape looks the same upside down, so there is no reversed reading.
- Place in the row
- 9 of 24 Heimdall's Aett, aett 2
- Sound
- h said HA-ga-lahz
- Rune poems
- 3 of 3 named hægl · hagall
- Read as
- Hail from the rune’s name
Dickins, Runic and Heroic Poems, 1915.
Hagalaz reversed
Hagalaz is symmetrical — turning it over changes nothing, so it has no reversed meaning.
18 pages · printable
The 2027 Sky Calendar — free PDF
Every retrograde, eclipse, new and full moon of 2027 to the minute, already converted to your city. A month to a page, ready to print.
Where Hagalaz sits in the Elder Futhark
Hagalaz is rune 9, the first of the eight in Heimdall's Aett, which it opens; Nauthiz follows.
Position in the row9 of 24
AettHeimdall's Aett
SoundH
Literal meaningHail
ElementWater
Can be reversedNo
Its shape is one of the 9 in the row that look the same after a half-turn, so an upside-down draw cannot be seen. It has no reversed reading here.
In a reading
What Hagalaz usually means when you draw it
Hagalaz is hail — sudden disruption from outside that cannot be controlled. It clears the ground, but the storm has to be weathered first.
Hagalaz in love
Unexpected upheaval; how you respond matters more than the event.
Hagalaz at work
Sudden change, setbacks or crises beyond your control.
Advice
Shelter what matters and wait for the storm to melt.
Primary source
What the rune poems say about Hagalaz
In brief, the Anglo-Saxon verse calls hail the whitest of grains, whirled down from the sky by wind and then melting into water.
“Hail is the whitest of grain; it is whirled from the vault of heaven and is tossed about by gusts of wind and then it melts into water.”
Hægl byþ hwitust corna; hwyrft hit of heofones lyfte,
wealcaþ hit windes scura; weorþeþ hit to wætere
syððan.
“Hail is the coldest of grain; Christ created the world of old.”
Hagall er kaldastr korna;
Kristr skóp hæimenn forna.
“Hail — cold grain and shower of sleet and sickness of serpents.”
Hagall er kaldakorn
ok krapadrífa
ok snáka sótt.
Bruce Dickins, Runic and Heroic Poems of the Old Teutonic Peoples (Cambridge University Press, 1915) — read the original text.
Both the original texts and the translations are from Dickins’s edition. Where the three rune poems come from
Hagalaz in the three rune poems, side by side
All three poems agree: the verse for Hagalaz is about hail.
| Source | Name | The verse is about |
|---|---|---|
| Elder Futhark name (reconstructed) | Hagalaz | hail |
| Anglo-Saxon rune poem | hægl | hail |
| Norwegian rune poem | hagall | hail |
| Icelandic rune poem | hagall | hail |
Subjects in the words of Dickins’s 1915 translation; the first row is the modern reconstructed name and reading.
Calculated
Hagalaz by the numbers
In 2026 the date-seeded draw lands on Hagalaz only 10 times, under the even share of 15.2, which puts it joint 20th of 24 with 2 others. October is its busiest month, with 3. Its longest gap between draws, from March 1 to June 16, spans 107 days.
Position in the row
9 of 24
Odds of drawing it
1 in 24 · 4.17%
Rune of the day in 2026
10 times · 2.74%
Can be reversed
No
Days in 2026:
- Jan 12
- Feb 13
- Mar 1
- Jun 16
- Aug 5, 11
- Oct 14, 23, 28
- Dec 18
Which runes can be reversed, and how the daily draw is fixed →
What happened to it
Hagalaz after the Elder Futhark
In the Younger Futhark
Survived as hagall, hail, with a new six-armed shape, and gave its name to the second of the three ættir.
Worth knowing
The Icelandic rune poem calls hail 'cold grain and shower of sleet and sickness of serpents'.
Hagalaz: deity, tree and element
Pronounced
HA-ga-lahz
Deity
Hel and Urd
Tree
Yew
Element
Water
The poem above is a source; this table is a twentieth-century reconstruction.
How to type the Hagalaz rune
| Character | ᚺ |
|---|---|
| Code point | U+16BA |
| Unicode name | RUNIC LETTER HAGLAZ H |
| HTML | ᚺ or ᚺ |
The Unicode standard names it Haglaz, not Hagalaz.
Copy the character, or paste the code into a web page; it shows wherever a font covers the Runic block, added in Unicode 3.0.
Sources
- Bruce Dickins, Runic and Heroic Poems of the Old Teutonic Peoples (Cambridge University Press, 1915)
Statements of fact on this page were checked against these sources in October 2026. How we choose and check sources: editorial policy.
Cite this page
AstroHot. “Hagalaz Rune Meaning: Hail.” Accessed October 28, 2026. https://astrohot.com/runes/hagalaz/
For Wikipedia
{{cite web |title=Hagalaz Rune Meaning: Hail |url=https://astrohot.com/runes/hagalaz/ |website=AstroHot |access-date=2026-10-28}}