The Elder Futhark

There are twenty four letters, and every one of them is built from straight strokes. There is a reason for that. These were letters for cutting, into wood with a knife and into stone with a chisel, and a curve is hard to cut while a straight line is easy. The strokes also run upright or on a slant and almost never flat, because a flat stroke cut into a plank runs with the grain and disappears. Once you know that, the shapes stop looking like a code and start looking like what they are, the handwriting of people who wrote with a blade.

The twenty four are arranged in three rows of eight. Each row is an aett, an old word for a group of eight or a family. I will take them one row at a time, with the sound of each rune and one line on its picture. Every rune has its own page in The Runes, and this page is the map.

The first aett

The first row is often named for a god of plenty and good harvests, and I will leave his name to the scholars. Its pictures are the goods and the gifts of ordinary life, from the cattle in the paddock to the plain gladness of a good evening.

Fehu, sound F, is cattle. Wealth that moves, the livestock and the goods you can carry, what you earn and own and share. The shape is an upright stroke with two branches reaching up and to the right, like the horns of a cow.

Uruz, sound U, is the aurochs, the great wild ox. Strength, health, raw vitality, the untamed thing.

Thurisaz, the Th of thorn, is the giant, and in some readings the thorn itself. Force, defence, the sharp thing that protects and the sharp thing that hurts, and a warning to think before you act.

Ansuz, sound A, is a god, and the mouth. Speech, breath, inspiration, a message, good advice, the voice of an elder.

Raidho, sound R, is riding, the wagon and the road. Travel, movement, the right order of things, the rhythm of a long trip.

Kenaz, sound K, is the torch. Knowledge, craft, the light of understanding, the fire you work with.

Gebo, sound G, is the gift. Exchange, generosity, partnership, the balance of giving and receiving. The shape is two slanted strokes crossing, like a kiss at the bottom of a letter.

Wunjo, sound W, is joy. Harmony, wellbeing, fellowship, the good moment and the sense to be glad in it.

The second aett

The second row is Hagal's aett, named for the hail it opens with. It begins in hard weather, passes through need and ice and the slow turning of the year, and comes out at the sun. I think of it as the row that knows what winter is for.

Hagalaz, sound H, is hail. Disruption, the storm that cannot be stopped and passes, the hard weather that clears the air.

Nauthiz, sound N, is need. Constraint, necessity, friction, the lack that teaches.

Isa, sound I, is ice. Stillness, standstill, a pause, the frozen surface that may be thin. The shape is a single upright stroke, which is about as plain as a letter gets.

Jera, sound J but said as a Y, is the year, the harvest. The cycle coming round, reward in its season, patience paid.

Eihwaz, sound Ei, is the yew tree. Endurance, the tree of the dead that lives for a thousand years, the strong spine, transition.

Perthro, sound P, is the lot cup, the dice cup. Chance, fate, hidden things, the mystery of what is not yet decided. It is a fitting rune to find in a bag of runes.

Algiz, sound Z, is the elk, and in some readings the sedge grass. Protection, the raised hand, the guardian keeping watch. The shape is an upright stroke with two arms lifted, like a person with both hands in the air.

Sowilo, sound S, is the sun. Success, wholeness, energy, the light that shows the way.

Tyr's aett

The third row is named for Tyr, the god of its first rune, and it is mostly about people. Justice, the birch, the horse, humankind, the water, the seed in the ground, the day and the home. If the first row is what you have and the second is what the weather does to you, the third is who you are among others.

Tiwaz, sound T, is the god Tyr. Justice, honour, victory earned fairly, the sacrifice made for the sake of order. The shape is an upright stroke with a pointed top, like an arrow or a spearhead.

Berkano, sound B, is the birch. Growth, new beginnings, birth and nurture, the mother tree. The Birch page in Celtic Tree Astrology carries the same tree from the other side of the sea.

Ehwaz, sound E, is the horse. Partnership, trust, movement together, the team of two.

Mannaz, sound M, is man in the old sense of humankind. The self among others, community, the mind, what people are.

Laguz, sound L, is water, the lake. Flow, intuition, the unconscious, what runs underneath.

Ingwaz, sound Ng, is the god Ing. Fertility, gestation, potential held and waiting, the seed in the ground.

Dagaz, sound D, is day. Breakthrough, awakening, the turn from dark to light, a new dawn.

Othala, sound O, is inheritance, the homestead. Home, heritage, what is handed down, the land and the family.

One note on the order. Some of the old inscriptions put Othala before Dagaz, so that the alphabet ends on the dawn. The pages here follow the common modern order, with Dagaz at twenty three and Othala at twenty four, ending on home. Either way the row ends somewhere worth ending.

Which runes can be reversed

A rune drawn upside down is read as its meaning blocked, delayed or turned against you. The books call this merkstave, a dark stave, and each rune page gives one short paragraph on it.

Eight of the twenty four look the same either way up, and so they have no reversed reading. They are Gebo, Hagalaz, Isa, Jera, Eihwaz, Sowilo, Ingwaz and Dagaz. When one of these comes up the rune is simply itself, and if it has a hard side on that day the hard side shows in the runes around it. Nauthiz is argued over, because its slanted cross stroke can be read either way, and I treat it as reversible.

That leaves sixteen runes that can land upside down. The How to Cast the Runes page covers how to read them in a draw.

The sounds as a set

Read down the alphabet by sound and you get F, U, Th, A, R, K, G, W, then H, N, I, Y, Ei, P, Z, S, then T, B, E, M, L, Ng, D, O. It is most of the sounds you need to write a northern language with a knife, and the gaps are the sounds those languages did not use. People spelled their names with these, and the names of their dead, and sometimes just the word for the thing they had made.

I find it worth remembering that every rune on this page was a working letter before it was anything else. The pictures came with the letters because the names were ordinary words. When you draw Fehu you are holding a letter F that happens to have a thousand years of cattle attached to it. That is a good thing to hold.

If you would like your own chart read, my readings are here.

Related pages
The Ogham and the Tree Calendar