The second aett: Hagalaz to Sowilo

In this lesson: Hagalaz to Sowilo, the runes of hail, need, ice and sun, with sounds, the rune poems and how to read hard runes.

The second aett holds some of the runes beginners fear most: hail, need, ice. By the end of this lesson I hope you see them as the rune poems did, as hard weather that passes and hardship that can teach. Its sounds run h, n, i, j, ï, p, z, s.

The eight runes

1. ᚺ Hagalaz (HAH-gah-lahz), h. Name: hail, secure. The English poem calls hail the whitest grain, tossed by storms until it turns to water. Modern: disruption, sudden change.
2. ᚾ Naudiz (NOW-deez), n. Name: need, distress, secure. Need is a tightness in the chest, yet it often becomes help if heeded in time. Modern: need, constraint, hardship.
3. ᛁ Isa (EE-sah), i. Name: ice, secure. Ice is cold and slippery, beautiful as glass, a wide bridge and a peril. Modern: stillness, pause, standstill.
4. ᛃ Jera (YEH-rah), j as in “year”. Name: year, good harvest, secure. Harvest is people’s hope, shared with the great and the needy. Modern: harvest, reward, cycles.
5. ᛇ Eihwaz (AY-wahz), an uncertain vowel written ï. Name: yew, probable. The yew is hard, deep-rooted and keeps green through winter. Modern: endurance, resilience.
6. ᛈ Perthro (PERTH-ro), p. Name: unknown. The English poem speaks of play and laughter in the beer hall, perhaps a game. Modern: mystery, the unknown, chance.
7. ᛉ Algiz (AHL-geez), z, later R. Name: uncertain, perhaps elk. The English poem describes elk-sedge, a sharp fen grass that wounds whoever grabs it. Modern: protection, guardianship.
8. ᛊ Sowilo (so-WEE-lo), s. Name: sun, secure. Sailors set their hope on the sun until they reach land. Modern: sun, success, vitality.

Weather, hardship and the unknown

Historical Notice how practical the poems are. Hail falls and melts. Need narrows your choices but can teach you. Ice is a bridge as well as a danger. The year turns, and harvest comes to everyone. These are farmers’ and sailors’ observations, written down in a Christian world, and they rarely treat a hard thing as purely evil. Perthro and Algiz show the limits of what we know: Perthro’s name is lost, and Algiz is a convention. Most of the clever meanings you read for them are modern guesses.

Modern A rune with a hard name is not a curse. If Hagalaz turns up, it can point to things outside your control, and the poem reminds you that hail becomes water. Isa can be a sensible pause, not a disaster. Hold readings lightly: a reading is a mirror, not a verdict.

The poems in their own words

Historical Here are the Old English stanzas for the second aett in Dickins’s 1915 translation, with a Norwegian line where it adds something. Hagalaz: “Hail is the whitest of grain; it is whirled from the vault of heaven and is tossed about by gusts of wind and then it melts into water.” The Norwegian is shorter: “Hail is the coldest of grain.” Naudiz: “Trouble is oppressive to the heart; yet often it proves a source of help and salvation to the children of men, to everyone who heeds it betimes.”

The Norwegian puts it starkly: “Constraint gives scant choice; a naked man is chilled by the frost.” Isa: “Ice is very cold and immeasurably slippery; it glistens as clear as glass and most like to gems; it is a floor wrought by the frost, fair to look upon.” The Norwegian adds “Ice we call the broad bridge; the blind man must be led.”

Jera: “Summer is a joy to men, when God, the holy King of Heaven, suffers the earth to bring forth shining fruits for rich and poor alike.” Eihwaz: “The yew is a tree with rough bark, hard and fast in the earth, supported by its roots, a guardian of flame and a joy upon an estate.” Perthro: “Peorth is a source of recreation and amusement to the great, where warriors sit blithely together in the banqueting-hall.”

Dickins leaves the word untranslated because nobody knows what it means. Algiz: “The Eolh-sedge is mostly to be found in a marsh; it grows in the water and makes a ghastly wound.” And Sowilo: “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.” The “fishes’ bath” is the sea and the “courser of the deep” is the ship, two kennings typical of Old English poetry.

How to read a hard rune, step by step

Modern When a rune like Hagalaz, Naudiz or Isa turns up, try these steps. First, notice your reaction and name it: worry, irritation, relief. Second, recall the poem rather than a keyword: hail melts, need helps those who heed it, ice is a bridge. Third, ask what in your situation is outside your control, and what is within it. Fourth, choose one small action. Fifth, write a line in your journal and let the reading go. This turns a frightening name into a practical question.

Three runes with a misuse history

Modern Hagalaz, Algiz and Sowilo appear in my list of runes sometimes misused by hate groups, Algiz as a stylized “life rune” and Sowilo when doubled to imitate the SS emblem. In their historical forms and ordinary contexts, they are simply letters for h, z and s. Lesson 5 explains how to check a design, and I keep the details on the misused symbols page.

A worked example

Imagine someone who chooses Naudiz. She writes about a winter when money was tight and she learned to cook properly from what was in the cupboard. “Need gave me a narrow choice,” she writes, borrowing from the Norwegian poem, “and the choice turned into a skill I still use.” She draws ᚾ at the top and notices that the rune no longer makes her flinch.

A second worked example: Isa as a bridge

Imagine someone draws Isa on a morning when she feels stuck in a quarrel with a friend. Her first thought is “frozen”. Then she remembers the Norwegian poem’s “broad bridge” and the line that “the blind man must be led”. She writes: “Maybe the cold silence is also a bridge, if I cross it carefully, and maybe I cannot see the whole situation yet.” She sends a short, warm message rather than a long explanation, and waits for a reply.

The Icelandic poem on the second aett

Historical Five runes of the second aett also appear in the Icelandic rune poem, each with three kennings. In Dickins’s 1915 translation:

Hagalaz (hagall): “Hail = cold grain and shower of sleet and sickness of serpents.” Dickins explains that “sickness of serpents” is a kenning for winter, the season when snakes lie still.

Naudiz (nauð): “Constraint = grief of the bond-maid and state of oppression and toilsome work.” This is the hardest stanza in the poem, a picture of forced labour.

Isa (íss): “Ice = bark of rivers and roof of the wave and destruction of the doomed.” The first two kennings are almost tender: ice as the skin of a river, a roof over the water.

Jera (ár): “Plenty = boon to men and good summer and thriving crops.” All three poems agree that this rune is about a good year.

Sowilo (sól): “Sun = shield of the clouds and shining ray and destroyer of ice.” Placed next to the stanza for Isa, it reads like an answer: the sun ends the ice.

Reading the second aett as weather

Read these stanzas together and you see how much of the second aett belongs to a northern year: hail, hardship, ice, harvest and sun. For people who lived by farming and fishing, weather was not a metaphor. It decided whether they ate well or went hungry. Modern readers often turn these runes into inner states, such as disruption, need and stillness, and that can be useful. It is worth remembering, though, that the poems themselves speak of fields and rivers first.

Practice variations

Weather journal. For one week, note the real weather each day and pick the rune from this aett that fits it best. It is a simple way to anchor the runes in the world the poems describe.

Pair the opposites. Lay Isa and Sowilo side by side, then Hagalaz and Jera. Write one sentence for each pair about how the first becomes the second. Hail falls, and later the crops grow. Ice holds, and the sun releases it.

One kenning a day. Choose one of the Icelandic kennings above, such as “roof of the wave”, and carry it through your day. Notice where it fits something in your own life. Kennings are small poems, and they reward slow attention.

A worked example: Naudiz in a daily draw

Imagine someone draws Naudiz on a morning when she has a long list of tasks she does not want to do. She reads the Old English stanza, which says that trouble often proves “a source of help and salvation” to those who heed it in time, and the Icelandic one, with its “toilsome work”. She does not take either as a prediction. Instead, she asks what the hardest task on her list might teach her, and does that one first. In the evening she writes: “Need, then relief.” That is all a rune needs to do.

Questions beginners ask

Is Hagalaz a bad omen? No. In the poems hail is weather that falls and melts. A modern reader can treat it as a disruption to adapt to.

Why does Eihwaz have such a different meaning in some books? The yew is linked with death in some modern writing because yews grow in churchyards, but the poem praises its strength and roots. Choose the meaning you can explain.

What is the right meaning for Perthro? Nobody knows. That uncertainty is honest, and many readers read it as mystery or chance for exactly that reason.

Try this

Learn the second aett the same way as the first: names aloud and shapes drawn twice a day for three days, then from memory on day four. Then choose Naudiz, Hagalaz or Isa and write half a page: “A time this hard thing turned out to be useful was…” Draw the rune at the top of the page.

Recap

The second aett is h, n, i, j, ï, p, z, s: Hagalaz, Naudiz, Isa, Jera, Eihwaz, Perthro, Algiz, Sowilo. The poems treat hail, need and ice as hard but passing, and often useful. Perthro’s name is unknown and Algiz’s is uncertain. Three of these runes have a misuse history, and context decides how a shape is read.

What next

Press “Mark as done” and continue with The third aett: Tiwaz to Othala. Each rune has its own page, for example Hagalaz and Sowilo.

Further reading: Bruce Dickins, Runic and Heroic Poems of the Old Teutonic Peoples (1915).

Sources

• Michael P. Barnes, Runes: A Handbook (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2012).
• Bruce Dickins, Runic and Heroic Poems of the Old Teutonic Peoples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915).
• R. I. Page, Runes (London: British Museum Press, 1987).

Go deeper: the runes pages on this site

Mark as done