Upright
Constraint and hard necessity. Resistance that teaches something — the friction that starts the fire.
Rune 10 of 24 · Heimdall's Aett
ᚾ Nauthiz
Nauthiz is rune 10 of the 24 in the Elder Futhark, in Heimdall's Aett, and carries the sound N. It means “Need, necessity”. Upright: Constraint and hard necessity. Resistance that teaches something — the friction that starts the fire. Reversed: Need denied or indulged. Hardship made worse by refusing to acknowledge it. That reading exists for 17 of the 24 runes; the other 7 are symmetrical or read upright only.
Reversed
Need denied or indulged. Hardship made worse by refusing to acknowledge it.
Position in the row10 of 24
AettHeimdall's Aett
SoundN
Literal meaningNeed, necessity
ElementFire
Can be reversedYes
Nauthiz is the 10th rune of the Elder Futhark and belongs to Heimdall's Aett. Before it meant anything divinatory it was a letter, carrying the N sound.
Primary source
What the rune poem says
Need is oppressive to the heart, yet often it proves a source of help and salvation to the children of men, if they heed it in time.
— 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
Nauthiz by the numbers
Position in the row
10 of 24
Odds of drawing it
1 in 24 · 4.17%
Rune of the day in 2026
13 times · 3.56%
Reversed on those days
31%
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: 29 Apr, 24 May, 19 Jun, 25 Jun, 28 Jul, 1 Aug, 15 Aug, 22 Aug
What happened to it
Nauthiz after the Elder Futhark
In the Younger Futhark
Survived as nauðr, need. Its meaning stayed remarkably constant for over a thousand years.
Worth knowing
The Icelandic poem calls it the bondmaid's grief — an unusually specific and bleak gloss.
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
NOW-theez
Deity
Norns
Tree
Beech
Element
Fire
Nauthiz sits in Heimdall's Aett, position 10 of the row, and carries the N sound. Its literal meaning is need, necessity — which is where every later reading of it starts.
The poem above is a source; this table is twentieth-century reconstruction.