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.
Inspired words, attentive listening, and a voice of your own.
a · A god or divine being.
Our interpretationAn idea gathers power when it finds its words. We read Ansuz as an invitation to listen closely, name what matters, and speak with a little more clarity when a new chapter calls.
Historical name reference ↗Direction, purposeful movement, and finding your rhythm.
r · Riding; a journey on horseback or by vehicle.
Our interpretationA road is made of choices repeated: a turn, a pace, a place to rest. Raidho carries the spirit of setting out with purpose, leaving enough room for the journey to change you.
Historical name reference ↗Possibility, discovery, and openness to an unwritten outcome.
p · Uncertain; the original word's meaning is not securely known.
Our interpretationThis rune keeps a genuine mystery: its name has no settled translation. Our Perthro gives that open space a modern story, inviting curiosity when the next part of your path is still unwritten.
Historical name reference ↗Renewal, nurture, and a beginning given room to grow.
b · Birch; a birch branch.
Our interpretationA young birch brings the story back to growing things. Berkano marks the tender part of a beginning: an idea, a relationship, or a life change that needs care before it needs speed.
Historical name reference ↗Adaptability, emotional awareness, and finding a way forward.
l · Water.
Our interpretationWater meets a stone and finds another course. In our Laguz story, feeling and direction can move together: notice what is changing, loosen your grip, and follow the opening you can see.
Historical name reference ↗Fresh perspective, an opening, and the first step into change.
d · Day.
Our interpretationAs daylight arrives, familiar things reveal another face. Our Dagaz celebrates that moment of recognition, when a new possibility becomes clear enough to step toward.
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.