Upright
The harvest arriving in its own time. Cycles completing, and the reward for work done a season ago.
Rune 12 of 24 · Heimdall's Aett
ᛃ Jera
Jera is rune 12 of the 24 in the Elder Futhark, in Heimdall's Aett, and carries the sound J/Y. It means “Year, harvest”. Upright: The harvest arriving in its own time. Cycles completing, and the reward for work done a season ago. The shape is symmetrical, so it has no reversed position at all — true of only 4 runes in the row.
Reversed
Jera is symmetrical — turning it over changes nothing, so it has no reversed meaning.
Position in the row12 of 24
AettHeimdall's Aett
SoundJ/Y
Literal meaningYear, harvest
ElementEarth
Can be reversedNo
Jera is the 12th rune of the Elder Futhark and belongs to Heimdall's Aett. Before it meant anything divinatory it was a letter, carrying the J/Y sound.
This is one of the four symmetrical runes — along with Gebo, Isa, Jera and Ingwaz — which cannot be drawn reversed.
Primary source
What the rune poem says
Summer is a joy to men, when God, the holy King of Heaven, suffers the earth to bring forth shining fruits for rich and poor alike.
— 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
Jera by the numbers
Position in the row
12 of 24
Odds of drawing it
1 in 24 · 4.17%
Rune of the day in 2026
16 times · 4.38%
Can be reversed
No
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: 1 Jan, 23 Feb, 12 Mar, 27 May, 11 Jun, 17 Jul, 9 Aug, 16 Aug
What happened to it
Jera after the Elder Futhark
In the Younger Futhark
Survived as ár, year or good harvest, but its shape changed beyond recognition — from two facing hooks to a single stroke with a branch.
Worth knowing
The sound also shifted from J to A, one of the largest changes in the whole row.
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
YARE-ah
Deity
Freyr
Tree
Oak
Element
Earth
Jera sits in Heimdall's Aett, position 12 of the row, and carries the J/Y sound. Its literal meaning is year, harvest — which is where every later reading of it starts.
The poem above is a source; this table is twentieth-century reconstruction.