- Name
- dæg
- Meaning
- day
- Transliteration
- d
- Sound
- /d/
- Unicode
U+16DErunic letter dagaz daeg d
Line of descent
History
The d rune is the elder "bowtie" form, two triangles meeting point to point between uprights. Its name dæg "day" matches the elder reconstruction *dagaz. Since the rune did not survive in the Younger Futhark, the English name is the main evidence for that reconstruction.
The rune poem gives day a fully Christian meaning: "the Lord's messenger", "the Creator's glorious light", useful to rich and poor alike. Hickes's text has mann written above dæg, the mirror of the confusion at stanza 20. Dickins blamed the scribe of Cotton Domitian A.ix, from which Hickes took his variant apparatus.
Like mann and eþel, the rune was used as an abbreviation for its name. Dickins noted that it stands regularly for dæg in the Durham Ritual and sometimes in the Lindisfarne Gospels' glosses. In inscriptions d occurs in flodu on the front of the Franks Casket and medu on the Undley bracteate. The Ruthwell Cross has rodi. On the Seax of Beagnoth it is 21st, ahead of l and m.
In the rune poems
mære metodes leoht, myrgþ and tohiht
eadgum and earmum, eallum brice.
the Creator's glorious light, a joy and a hope
to the fortunate and the poor, of use to all.
Original text from the public-domain editions named on each poem's page; translations are our own.
Where it is found
- Seax of Beagnoth, position 21 (out of usual order)
- Undley bracteate: medu
- Ruthwell Cross: rodi 'cross'
- Durham Ritual: rune used for dæg
On inscriptions described on this site
Sources
- Dickins (1915), pp. 20–21 and note to v. 74.
- Wikipedia, 'Seax of Beagnoth', checked 2026-10.