The rune poems: Old English, Norwegian and Icelandic

How to read the labels Historical what the old sources say. Later tradition what later writers added. Modern modern practice and my own notes.

If you want to know what a rune “means,” the rune poems are where the oldest answers live. They are three short medieval poems, one in Old English, one in Old Norwegian and one in Old Icelandic, that give a verse for each rune. Every verse begins with the rune’s name and then describes the thing it is named for. On this page I explain where each poem comes from, show you a few stanzas side by side and suggest how to use them in your own reading.

A note on the translations: every stanza here is my own brief, literal rendering, made for plain sense rather than poetry. In short formulaic lines, a literal rendering will often resemble earlier translations, such as Bruce Dickins’s of 1915. When the meaning of a word is uncertain, I say so.

What the poems are, and what they are not

Historical Each rune had a name, an ordinary word that began with its sound: wealth, aurochs, thorn, hail, ice, sun, birch. The rune poems take those names and write a little verse about each one. Think of them as memory aids or teaching verses, a bit like an alphabet rhyme, but full of the weather, animals, trees and hardships of medieval life.

They are precious, but they have limits:

• They are medieval, not ancient. All three were written by Christians, centuries after the Elder Futhark had gone out of use.
• They describe the names, not secret meanings. A stanza about hail is really about hail. It is not a hidden key to “the h-rune’s energy.”
• Eight Elder runes appear only in the Old English poem. The Younger Futhark of Scandinavia dropped them, so the Norwegian and Icelandic poems have no verse for them.
• None of them is a divination manual. No poem says what a rune means when you draw it.

The Old English rune poem

Historical The Old English poem has 29 stanzas, one for each rune of the Anglo-Saxon futhorc it covers. Its manuscript was kept in the Cotton library in London and was destroyed in a fire in 1731. The text survives only because George Hickes printed it in 1705, and his copy has some errors. The language of the surviving text points to a manuscript no earlier than the tenth or eleventh century, but the poem itself is probably older, perhaps much older.

Its stanzas are several lines long and often carry a twist or a moral, and many have Christian references. Here are three in my renderings:

feoh (Fehu): Wealth is a solace to every person; yet each must give much of it away, if he wants to be granted favor before the Lord.

nȳd (Naudiz): Need is a tightness in the chest; yet it often becomes help and healing for people, if they heed it in time.

dæg (Dagaz): Day is the Lord’s envoy, precious to people, the Maker’s splendid light, cheer and hope for the well-off and the wretched alike, of use to everyone.

Notice how often the poem turns a hard thing toward something useful. Need can become help. Wealth must be shared. That habit of turning is one reason modern readers love it. The last five stanzas describe runes added in the English futhorc, such as āc (oak) and æsc (ash), with no Elder equivalent.

The Norwegian rune poem

Historical The Old Norwegian poem has 16 stanzas, one for each rune of the Younger Futhark, and each stanza is just two short rhyming lines. It is ascribed to a Norwegian author of the late thirteenth century. Its manuscript burned in the great fire of Copenhagen in 1728, but the Danish scholar Ole Worm had printed it in 1636.

The first line usually concerns the rune name. The second often seems unrelated, linked only by rhyme, and may preserve fragments of older proverbs. That gives the poem a strange, dreamlike quality:

fé (Fehu): Wealth stirs up strife among kin; the wolf is raised in the forest.

íss (Isa): Ice is what we name the wide bridge; a blind person needs leading.

týr (Tiwaz): Tyr is the one-handed among the gods; the smith often has to blow the bellows.

The Icelandic rune poem

Historical The Old Icelandic poem also has 16 stanzas. It is usually dated to the fifteenth century and survives in several manuscripts. Each stanza gives three short descriptions of the rune name, almost like riddle answers, followed in the manuscripts by a Latin word that roughly translates the name and an Old Norse word for a chieftain.

hagall (Hagalaz): Hail: a cold kernel, and a flurry of slush, and the snakes’ sickness. The Latin gloss is grando, “hail.”

sól (Sowilo): Sun: the clouds’ shield, and a shining disk, and the lifelong grief of ice. The Latin gloss is rota, “wheel.”

ár (Jera): Plenty: good for people, and a good summer, and a fully grown field. The Latin gloss is annus, “year.”

One rune, three poems

Reading the three poems side by side is the best way to feel how differently medieval people could see the same thing. Here is Fehu, wealth, in all three:

The English poem sees wealth as a comfort that must be shared. The two Norse poems see it as a cause of quarrels in families. “Fire of the flood” and “the serpent’s road” are poetic names for gold, from the stories of dragons lying on hoards. Together they give a rune of wealth that is both a blessing and a danger, which is far richer than a single keyword.

And here is ice, Isa:

Ice is beautiful, useful as a bridge in winter and deadly when it fails. Modern readers often reduce Isa to “stillness” or “being stuck.” The poems remind you that ice is also a road and a wonder.

And the sun, Sowilo:

The English poem gives the sun to sailors as a guide home; “the fishes’ bath” is a poetic name for the sea, and “the sea-steed” is a ship. The Norwegian poem pairs the sun’s light with a line about judgment. The Icelandic poem has the loveliest riddle of all: the sun is “the lifelong grief of ice,” because ice cannot survive it. If you ever draw Sowilo, you have three pictures to choose from: guidance, light and melting.

How the poems shaped modern meanings

Modern Almost every modern rune meaning grows, at least partly, out of these poems. Fehu becomes wealth and resources, Naudiz becomes need and resilience, Jera becomes harvest and patience, Sowilo becomes the sun and success. Some modern meanings stay close to the poems. Others drift far from them, borrowing ideas from astrology, psychology or the I Ching. When you meet a meaning in a book or online, it is worth asking: can I see where this came from in the poems, or is it someone’s later idea?

There is nothing wrong with later ideas. Modern practice is allowed to grow. But knowing which layer you are standing on keeps your reading honest.

How to use the poems in a reading

When you draw a rune, the poems give you a second voice beside the modern keyword. Here is how I suggest working with them:

1. Name the thing. Say what the rune is named for: cattle, ice, birch, sun. That is the oldest layer.
2. Read the stanzas slowly. Read whichever poems cover the rune. Ask what each says about the named thing, not about magic.
3. Notice the turn. Many stanzas turn from hard to helpful, or from pleasant to dangerous. Which side speaks to your question?
4. Pick one image. Choose one image, such as a pavement the frost has built or the clouds’ shield, and let it be your prompt.
5. Write one sentence. Connect the image to your situation in one sentence in your journal.

For example, if you draw Naudiz while worrying about a deadline, the Old English line “it often becomes help and healing for people, if they heed it in time” might become: “This pressure is useful if I act on it now rather than later.” The Norwegian line “Need gives a narrow choice” might become: “I have fewer options than I want, so I should choose one and start.” Both are honest, grounded readings, and neither pretends to predict anything.

You will find more on method on the page about how to cast and read runes, and every rune page, starting with Fehu, gives all the stanzas for that rune.

A few words that are hard to translate

Some stanzas contain words that scholars still argue about. In the Old English poem, the meaning of peorð (the Perthro stanza) is simply unknown: the verse describes play and laughter in the beer hall, and it might be a game piece, a dice cup or something else entirely. The Algiz stanza, eolhx, describes “elk-sedge,” a fen plant that wounds anyone who grasps it, but even the verb in that line is uncertain. In the Norwegian poem, one line about Loki’s deceit is obscure.

These gaps are honest reminders that the poems are old texts, copied and recopied, and that we read them through scholars’ best guesses. When a modern book gives a confident meaning for Perthro, that confidence does not come from the poems.

Respecting the poems

The poems belong to the shared literary heritage of England, Norway and Iceland. For many Heathens today they are also part of a living religious tradition. Read them with curiosity, quote them carefully and credit whichever translation you use. If you quote my renderings, please credit them as mine, and remember that they are one reading of texts whose details scholars still debate.