Upright
A defensive force, and a warning. Thurisaz is the thorn — it protects and it draws blood, depending which side you stand on.
Rune 3 of 24 · Freyr's Aett
ᚦ Thurisaz
Thurisaz is rune 3 of the 24 in the Elder Futhark, in Freyr's Aett, and carries the sound TH. It means “Thorn, giant”. Upright: A defensive force, and a warning. Thurisaz is the thorn — it protects and it draws blood, depending which side you stand on. Reversed: Danger ignored, or defensiveness turned into aggression. Acting before thinking. That reading exists for 17 of the 24 runes; the other 7 are symmetrical or read upright only.
Reversed
Danger ignored, or defensiveness turned into aggression. Acting before thinking.
Position in the row3 of 24
AettFreyr's Aett
SoundTH
Literal meaningThorn, giant
ElementFire
Can be reversedYes
Thurisaz is the 3th rune of the Elder Futhark and belongs to Freyr's Aett. Before it meant anything divinatory it was a letter, carrying the TH sound.
Primary source
What the rune poem says
The thorn is exceedingly sharp, an evil thing for any knight to touch, uncommonly severe on all who sit among them.
— 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
Thurisaz by the numbers
Position in the row
3 of 24
Odds of drawing it
1 in 24 · 4.17%
Rune of the day in 2026
20 times · 5.48%
Reversed on those days
25%
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: 11 Jan, 26 Jan, 4 Feb, 10 Feb, 9 Mar, 21 Mar, 23 May, 28 May
What happened to it
Thurisaz after the Elder Futhark
In the Younger Futhark
Survived as þurs, giant. One of the few runes whose name kept its mythological sense unchanged.
Worth knowing
Common in curse and protection inscriptions, often carved three times in a 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
THUR-ee-sahz
Deity
Thor
Tree
Hawthorn
Element
Fire
Thurisaz sits in Freyr's Aett, position 3 of the row, and carries the TH sound. Its literal meaning is thorn, giant — which is where every later reading of it starts.
The poem above is a source; this table is twentieth-century reconstruction.