Upright
Constraint and hard necessity. Resistance that teaches something — the friction that starts the fire.
Rune 10 of 24 · Heimdall's Aett
ᚾ Nauthiz
Need, necessity.
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
Three rune poems survive — Anglo-Saxon, Norwegian and Icelandic — and each gives a verse per rune. They are the closest thing to a contemporary source for what these symbols meant to the people using them, and they are older than every interpretation written since.
Read the verse against the modern meaning above. Sometimes they line up exactly; sometimes the medieval version is blunter and more practical than the spiritual reading that replaced it. Fehu is a good example — the poem is about cattle, wealth and the obligation to share it, not about abundance mindset.
The Anglo-Saxon poem survives only through a 1705 printed copy; the original manuscript burned in the Cotton library fire of 1731.
Traditional associations
Pronounced
NOW-theez
Deity
Norns
Tree
Beech
Element
Fire
Deity and tree correspondences are later reconstructions rather than attested medieval practice — they were largely assembled in the twentieth century by writers systematising the runes into a modern occult framework.
The rune poem above is a source. This table is interpretation. The difference is worth keeping in view.