- Name
- *berkanan (or *berkō)
- Meaning
- birch; birch twig
- Name known from
- Old English beorc (rune poem), Old Norse bjarkan (Scandinavian poems, a form found only as this rune's name); Gothic letter name bercna in Codex Vindobonensis 795
- Transliteration
- b
- Sound
- /b/ (with a fricative [β] between vowels)
- Unicode
U+16D2runic letter berkanan beorc bjarkan b
Line of descent
History
b is a stave with two pointed pockets on one side. It is the runic form of Latin B, made angular. On the Kylver stone it is mirrored. It changed little, though the short-twig Younger Futhark form ᛓ keeps only the upper pocket.
The name is a word for "birch". The Norwegian and Icelandic poems use bjarkan, a form found only as the name of this rune. It is usually explained as a derivative, *berkanan "birch twig". The ordinary word for the tree, *berkō, is the other candidate. The Old English beorc stanza describes a tree that bears no fruit but sends up shoots without seed. That suits the poplar better than the birch, and Old English glossaries do use birce for Latin populus. The Gothic letter name bercna supports the derivative.
The rune is well attested. The Tune stone has it in arbija "heirs" and arbijano. The Björketorp stone ends its curse with barutz "breaks". It is one of the runes in the repeated string on the Lindholm bone piece.
In the Younger Futhark the rune wrote both b and p, since pertho was lost. In medieval runes a dotted form ᛔ was made for p (see medieval runes). In England it continued as beorc.
In the rune poems
tanas butan tudder, biþ on telgum wlitig,
heah on helme hrysted fægere,
geloden leafum, lyfte getenge.
shoots without seed; it is lovely in its boughs,
high in its crown, finely adorned,
laden with leaves, reaching to the sky.
Loki bar flærða tíma.
Loki had good fortune in his deceits.
ok lítit tré
ok ungsamligr viðr.
and a little tree
and a youthful wood.
Original text from the public-domain editions named on each poem's page; translations are our own.
Where it is found
- Tune stone (N KJ72): arbija, arbijano
- Björketorp stone (DR 360): bArutz
- Kylver stone (G 88), position 18, mirrored
On inscriptions described on this site
Sources
- Samnordisk runtextdatabas (Rundata), signa N KJ72, DR 360, G 88, DR 261
- Dickins (1915), notes to Old English rune poem l. 51 and Norwegian poem st. 13