- Name
- ior (iar in Hickes)
- Meaning
- unknown; an amphibious creature, guessed to be the eel, newt or beaver
- Transliteration
- io
- Sound
- uncertain; the manuscripts give io; carved examples write palatal g/j
- Unicode
U+16E1runic letter ior
Line of descent
History
Ior is the rune poem's 28th rune, and it is a puzzle in both name and use. No Old English word ior or iar is known outside the rune lists. The rune poem describes "a river-fish" that feeds on land and lives in a "fair dwelling surrounded by water". Grimm proposed the eel. Dickins added the lizard or newt, and others have suggested the beaver. The rune is absent from Codex Vindobonensis 795. The value io comes from the manuscripts, and nothing in the inscriptions confirms it.
The shape is a different matter. Dickins pointed out that it is a form of the old j rune (*jēra). The same shape is used in 7th–9th-century Scandinavian inscriptions as a form of the j/a rune, among them the Björketorp and Stentoften stones. In England it occurs on the Dover stone (gislheard) and Thornhill III (gilsuiþ) with the value of palatal g, which had merged with old j. Dickins suggested, following Chadwick, that iar might even be a corruption of gear.
R. I. Page therefore classed ior as a "pseudo-rune" of the manuscript tradition: a real carved form of ger that scholars turned into a separate letter with an invented value. The Seax of Beagnoth's row omits it.
In the rune poems
fodres on foldan, hafaþ fægerne eard
wætre beworpen, ðær he wynnum leofaþ.
its food on land; it has a fair dwelling
surrounded by water, where it lives in delight.
Original text from the public-domain editions named on each poem's page; translations are our own.
Where it is found
- Dover stone: gislheard (shape used as ger, value palatal g)
- Thornhill III, Yorkshire: gilsuiþ (same use)
- Rune poem and Cotton Domitian A.ix as a separate rune ior
Sources
- Dickins (1915), pp. 22–23 and note to v. 87.
- Wikipedia, 'Anglo-Saxon runes' (citing Page 1999, pp. 45–47), checked 2026-10.