Wunjo upright
Contentment and shared happiness. Not excitement — the quieter satisfaction of things going well among people you like.
Rune 8 of 24 · Freyr's Aett
ᚹ Wunjo rune meaning
Wunjo rune meaning: contentment and shared happiness. Its name is read as “joy”; it is rune 8 of 24, in Freyr's Aett, with the sound w. Reversed: discontent, alienation, or joy that depends on something unstable.
- Place in the row
- 8 of 24 Freyr's Aett, aett 1
- Sound
- w said WOON-yo
- Rune poems
- 1 of 3 named wynn
- Read as
- Joy from the rune’s name
Dickins, Runic and Heroic Poems, 1915.
Wunjo reversed
Discontent, alienation, or joy that depends on something unstable.
18 pages · printable
The 2027 Sky Calendar — free PDF
Every retrograde, eclipse, new and full moon of 2027 to the minute, already converted to your city. A month to a page, ready to print.
Where Wunjo sits in the Elder Futhark
Wunjo is rune 8, the eighth of the eight in Freyr's Aett, which it closes after Gebo.
Position in the row8 of 24
AettFreyr's Aett
SoundW
Literal meaningJoy
ElementEarth
Can be reversedYes
In a reading
What Wunjo usually means when you draw it
Wunjo is joy, belonging and contentment. It tends to confirm that a situation is going well or that harmony is within reach.
Wunjo in love
Happiness and emotional fulfillment together.
Wunjo at work
A satisfying project or a team that works well.
Advice
Notice what is going right and enjoy it.
Primary source
What the rune poems say about Wunjo
In brief, the Anglo-Saxon verse describes joy as belonging to the person who is free of pain and worry and has enough comfort at home.
“Bliss he enjoys who knows not suffering, sorrow nor anxiety, and has prosperity and happiness and a good enough house.”
Wenne bruceþ, ðe can weana lyt
sares and sorge and him sylfa hæfþ
blæd and blysse and eac byrga geniht.
Bruce Dickins, Runic and Heroic Poems of the Old Teutonic Peoples (Cambridge University Press, 1915) — read the original text.
Both the original texts and the translations are from Dickins’s edition. The Norwegian and Icelandic poems cover only the 16 runes of the Younger Futhark, which dropped Wunjo. Where the three rune poems come from
Wunjo in the three rune poems, side by side
Only the Anglo-Saxon poem has a verse for Wunjo, and it is about bliss.
| Source | Name | The verse is about |
|---|---|---|
| Elder Futhark name (reconstructed) | Wunjo | joy |
| Anglo-Saxon rune poem | wynn | bliss |
| Norwegian and Icelandic poems | — | no verse: the Younger Futhark dropped Wunjo |
Subjects in the words of Dickins’s 1915 translation; the first row is the modern reconstructed name and reading.
Calculated
Wunjo by the numbers
Wunjo turns up 19 times as the rune of the day in 2026, above the even share of 15.2 — joint 3rd of 24 with one other rune. It lies reversed on 4 of them. February is its busiest month, with 4. Its longest gap between draws, from June 30 to August 23, spans 54 days.
Position in the row
8 of 24
Odds of drawing it
1 in 24 · 4.17%
Rune of the day in 2026
19 times · 5.21%
Reversed on those days
4 of 19
Can be reversed
Yes
Days in 2026:
- Jan 17
- Feb 2, 9, 16 (rev.), 21
- Mar 4, 10
- Apr 14, 28
- May 25
- Jun 30
- Aug 23
- Sep 6, 19 (rev.), 25
- Oct 5
- Nov 3 (rev.), 8
- Dec 2 (rev.)
Which runes can be reversed, and how the daily draw is fixed →
What happened to it
Wunjo after the Elder Futhark
In the Younger Futhark
Dropped from the Younger Futhark. The W sound was absorbed by úr.
Worth knowing
Its shape lived on as the letter wynn (ƿ) in Old English manuscripts, where it is easily mistaken for p.
Wunjo: deity, tree and element
Pronounced
WOON-yo
Deity
Odin
Tree
Ash
Element
Earth
The poem above is a source; this table is a twentieth-century reconstruction.
How to type the Wunjo rune
| Character | ᚹ |
|---|---|
| Code point | U+16B9 |
| Unicode name | RUNIC LETTER WUNJO WYNN W |
| HTML | ᚹ or ᚹ |
Besides Wunjo, the official name lists Wynn, a name the same stave carries in another row or poem.
Copy the character, or paste the code into a web page; it shows wherever a font covers the Runic block, added in Unicode 3.0.
Sources
- Bruce Dickins, Runic and Heroic Poems of the Old Teutonic Peoples (Cambridge University Press, 1915)
Statements of fact on this page were checked against these sources in October 2026. How we choose and check sources: editorial policy.
Cite this page
AstroHot. “Wunjo Rune Meaning: Joy.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://astrohot.com/runes/wunjo/
For Wikipedia
{{cite web |title=Wunjo Rune Meaning: Joy |url=https://astrohot.com/runes/wunjo/ |website=AstroHot |access-date=2026-10-27}}