Upright
Success, vitality and clarity. Wholeness — the rune closest to unambiguously good news.
Rune 16 of 24 · Heimdall's Aett
ᛊ Sowilo
Sowilo is rune 16 of the 24 in the Elder Futhark, in Heimdall's Aett, and carries the sound S. It means “Sun”. Upright: Success, vitality and clarity. Wholeness — the rune closest to unambiguously good news. Reversed: That reading exists for 17 of the 24 runes; the other 7 are symmetrical or read upright only.
Reversed
Usually read without a reversal; the sun does not shine upside down.
Position in the row16 of 24
AettHeimdall's Aett
SoundS
Literal meaningSun
ElementFire
Can be reversedNo
Sowilo is the 16th rune of the Elder Futhark and belongs to Heimdall's Aett. Before it meant anything divinatory it was a letter, carrying the S sound.
Primary source
What the rune poem says
The sun is ever a joy in the hopes of seafarers when they journey away over the fishes' bath, until the courser of the deep bears them to land.
— 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
Sowilo by the numbers
Position in the row
16 of 24
Odds of drawing it
1 in 24 · 4.17%
Rune of the day in 2026
17 times · 4.66%
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: 3 Jan, 8 Jan, 20 Jan, 23 Apr, 6 May, 19 May, 31 May, 18 Jun
What happened to it
Sowilo after the Elder Futhark
In the Younger Futhark
Survived as sól, sun, though its zigzag was simplified to a single angled stroke.
Worth knowing
Its later appropriation by the SS in the twentieth century is the reason many people meet this rune with unease.
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
so-WEE-lo
Deity
Baldur and Sol
Tree
Juniper
Element
Fire
Sowilo sits in Heimdall's Aett, position 16 of the row, and carries the S sound. Its literal meaning is sun — which is where every later reading of it starts.
The poem above is a source; this table is twentieth-century reconstruction.