ᛁ is

Line of descent

History

The single upright stroke is the simplest rune and the most stable one. Its name is is "ice" in Old English and íss in Old Norse, and its value is i everywhere. The rune poem gives ice one of its most visual stanzas: "it glitters clear as glass, most like to gems, a floor wrought by frost". The Norwegian poem calls ice "a broad bridge". The elder name *īsaz is not in doubt.

In English runic spelling i also appears in combinations that write diphthongs and glides. In the Ruthwell poem modig "proud" is spelled with ig, and legdun with eg, reflecting the softened g after a front vowel. On the right side of the Franks Casket, where some vowels are written with cryptic substitute forms, the i has its own variant, encoded separately in Unicode (ᛵ).

Ordinary examples are plentiful. On the front of the casket it is the second rune of fisc "fish" and occurs in fergenberig and sric. The Ruthwell Cross has it in krist, rodi and ic.

In the rune poems

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 11
• Franks Casket, front panel: fisc, sric
• Ruthwell Cross: krist, rodi, ic

On inscriptions described on this site

Sources

• Dickins (1915), pp. 14–15.
• Wikipedia, 'Anglo-Saxon runes' (combinations table) and 'Ruthwell Cross', checked 2026-10.