Upright
Inheritance — land, family, tradition and what was handed down. What you belong to rather than what you acquired.
Rune 24 of 24 · Tyr's Aett
ᛟ Othala
Othala is rune 24 of the 24 in the Elder Futhark, in Tyr's Aett, and carries the sound O. It means “Ancestral property, homeland”. Upright: Inheritance — land, family, tradition and what was handed down. What you belong to rather than what you acquired. Reversed: Rootlessness, or clinging to an inheritance that has become a burden. That reading exists for 17 of the 24 runes; the other 7 are symmetrical or read upright only.
Reversed
Rootlessness, or clinging to an inheritance that has become a burden.
Position in the row24 of 24
AettTyr's Aett
SoundO
Literal meaningAncestral property, homeland
ElementEarth
Can be reversedYes
Othala is the 24th rune of the Elder Futhark and belongs to Tyr's Aett. Before it meant anything divinatory it was a letter, carrying the O sound.
Primary source
What the rune poem says
An estate is very dear to every man, if he can enjoy there in his house whatever is right and proper in constant prosperity.
— 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
Othala by the numbers
Position in the row
24 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
30%
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: 27 Mar, 12 May, 7 Jun, 13 Jun, 29 Jul, 14 Aug, 28 Aug, 9 Dec
What happened to it
Othala after the Elder Futhark
In the Younger Futhark
Dropped from the Younger Futhark. Its O sound merged into óss.
Worth knowing
Its association with inherited land made it a target for appropriation by nationalist movements, which is worth knowing before wearing one.
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
OH-tha-la
Deity
Odin
Tree
Hawthorn
Element
Earth
Othala sits in Tyr's Aett, position 24 of the row, and carries the O sound. Its literal meaning is ancestral property, homeland — which is where every later reading of it starts.
The poem above is a source; this table is twentieth-century reconstruction.