- Name
- *jēra
- Meaning
- year; a good year, harvest
- Name known from
- Old English gēr/gēar (rune poem), Old Norse ár (Scandinavian poems), Gothic jēr; Gothic letter name gaar in Codex Vindobonensis 795
- Transliteration
- j
- Sound
- /j/ (English y in yes)
- Unicode
U+16C3runic letter jeran j
Line of descent
History
The j rune is made of two hooks or angles set against each other, without a full stave in its earliest form. Its origin is not settled. One proposal (Odenstedt) derives it from Latin G. The Gothic bishop Wulfila's 4th-century alphabet seems to have taken its letter for j from this rune.
The name *jēra means "year", and especially the warm season and its yield. That is the sense in all three poems. The Old English gēr is the hope of men when God lets the earth bear fruit. The Norwegian and Icelandic ár is the boon of men and a good summer. English year is the same word.
The rune's later history is a clear case of a sound change carrying a rune to a new value. In early Old Norse, initial j was lost, so *jāra became ár. The name now began with a, and by the acrophonic principle the rune came to stand for a. Meanwhile the old a rune, ansuz, had shifted towards a nasal ą and o. In 7th-century inscriptions from Blekinge in Sweden (Stentoften, Björketorp), a developed form of the old j-rune already writes a. In the Younger Futhark it became ᛅ (short-twig ᛆ). In England, initial j merged with palatal g, and the rune became ger.
Elder examples with the value j include harja on the Vimose comb, raunijaz at Øvre Stabu and holtijaz on the Gallehus horn.
In the rune poems
halig heofones cyning, hrusan syllan
beorhte bleda beornum ond ðearfum.
holy king of heaven, lets the earth give
bright fruits to the rich and to the poor.
get ek at ǫrr var Fróðe.
I hold that Fróði was generous.
ok gott sumar
ok algróinn akr.
and a good summer
and a fully ripened field.
Original text from the public-domain editions named on each poem's page; translations are our own.
Where it is found
- Vimose comb (DR 207): harja
- Gallehus horn (DR 12): holtijaz
- Björketorp stone (DR 360): developed form written for a in hAidz runo ronu (Rundata transliterates it as capital A)
On inscriptions described on this site
Sources
- Samnordisk runtextdatabas (Rundata), signa DR 207, DR 12, DR 360, DR 357
- Dickins (1915), notes to Old English rune poem ll. 32 and 87 and Norwegian poem st. 10
- Wikipedia, 'Jēran' and 'Elder Futhark' (checked 2026-10-26)