Old letters. Enduring stories. Meanings you can make your own.
Runes began as letters in Germanic writing systems. This guide uses the 24-letter Elder Futhark, with familiar modern spellings of names that scholars reconstruct from later evidence. Names, sounds, and shapes have varied across time and place.
The name meanings describe historical language evidence. The modern meanings, intention groups, and stories are our original symbolic interpretations for everyday life, love, and personal practice. They express intentions without promising an outcome.
Open a rune to read its story and discover the designs it inspires.
Resources, generosity, and abundance that circulates.
f · Cattle; movable wealth.
Our interpretationPicture wealth as something alive: a herd to tend, a skill to practice, a gift to share. Fehu becomes a mark for building enough, then letting good things move through your hands.
Historical name reference ↗Patient effort, ripening, and the harvest of consistent care.
j · Year.
Our interpretationA field changes through many ordinary days before the harvest comes. Jera celebrates that patient rhythm: planting, tending, waiting, and recognizing the season when your work is ready to gather.
Historical name reference ↗Stored potential, patient preparation, and quiet growth.
ŋ · Ing; a divine name.
Our interpretationWe give this enclosed shape the image of a seed held safely before it opens. Ingwaz is a mark for gathering your energy and tending the promise of something that is not yet visible.
Historical name reference ↗A transliteration identifies a letter; it is not an English translation or a guide to spelling every modern word. Here þ represents the th-sound, j is the scholarly letter convention, ŋ represents ng, and ï labels the eihwaz rune's uncertain vowel sound.
Our bindrunes combine selected letters into original intention-led designs. Any link we make between a rune, a lunar phase, and a planetary theme is a modern creative choice, rather than a fixed correspondence for all 24 runes inherited from antiquity.
Runic characters and encoded names; historical letterforms can vary.
Expert-authored account of the 24-letter alphabet, reconstructed names, name meanings, and uncertain sound values.
A later Old English naming and poetic tradition; the torch image for cen is distinguished from the disputed earlier k-rune name. No modern translation is reproduced here.
Runes were letters used to write early Germanic languages. Elder Futhark had 24 signs and takes its name from the sounds of its first six letters. It was in use centuries before the Viking Age, when a shorter 16-sign alphabet became common in Scandinavia.
On the back of a silver brooch found at Gårdlösa in Sweden, someone carved two words: ek unwodz, meaning “I, Unwodz.” The inscription faced the wearer. It preserves a name in a place that most people would never see.