The Old English Rune Poem
The Old English Rune Poem is a sequence of 29 short stanzas, one for each rune of the Anglo-Saxon futhorc from f to ea. Each stanza opens with the rune's name, and the…
The Old Norwegian Rune Poem
The Norwegian rune poem, called Rúnakvæði in Norse, gives one couplet to each of the sixteen runes of the Younger Futhark, in the traditional order from f to ʀ. The…
The Old Icelandic Rune Poem
The Icelandic rune poem gives one short stanza to each of the sixteen runes of the Younger Futhark. Each stanza names the rune and then gives three descriptions of what…
What the poems are, and what they are not
Each poem works through a runic row in order, one stanza per rune. The stanza opens with the rune's name and then says something about the thing the name means: wealth causes strife, ice is slippery, the birch has leaves. They are mnemonic and gnomic verse, like the proverb collections that survive beside them in the same languages, and they were written down by Christian authors several centuries after the runes they name were created.
None of the three poems uses the runes for fortune-telling, and none gives a rune a "meaning" beyond its name. The divinatory meanings found in modern rune books were built on these stanzas in the 20th century; how that happened is told on a page of its own.
Stanza by stanza: one rune in three poems
The Norwegian and Icelandic poems cover the same sixteen runes of the Younger Futhark, and the English poem covers most of the same names in their Old English form. Read side by side, they show what the poets shared and where they diverge.
| Rune | Old English | Old Norwegian | Old Icelandic |
|---|---|---|---|
| ᚠ | feoh | fé: Wealth causes strife among kinsmen; | fé: Wealth is strife among kinsmen |
| ᚢ | ur | úr: Slag comes from bad iron; | úr: Drizzle is the weeping of clouds |
| ᚦ | ðorn | þurs: The giant causes sickness in women; | þurs: Giant is the torment of women |
| ᚬ | os | óss: The river-mouth is the way of most journeys; | óss: The god is the ancient Gautr |
| ᚱ | rad | ræið: Riding, they say, is worst for horses; | reið: Riding is the bliss of the one who sits |
| ᚴ | cen | kaun: A sore is the bane of children; | kaun: A sore is the bane of children |
| ᚼ | hægl | hagall: Hail is the coldest of grains; | hagall: Hail is cold grain |
| ᚾ | nyd | nauðr: Need leaves a narrow choice; | nauð: Need is the grief of the bondwoman |
| ᛁ | is | íss: Ice we call a broad bridge; | íss: Ice is river-bark |
| ᛅ | ger | ár: Harvest is a boon to men; | ár: Harvest is a boon to men |
| ᛋ | sigel | sól: The sun is the light of the lands; | sól: The sun is the shield of the clouds |
| ᛏ | tir | týr: Týr is the one-handed among the gods; | týr: Týr is the one-handed god |
| ᛒ | beorc | bjarkan: Birch has the greenest leaves of any bough; | bjarkan: Birch is a leafy branch |
| ᛘ | man | maðr: Man is an increase of the dust; | maðr: Man is the delight of man |
| ᛚ | lagu | lǫgr: Water is what falls from the mountain | lögr: Water is welling liquid |
| ᛦ | eolh-secg | ýr: Yew is the greenest of trees in winter; | ýr: Yew is a bent bow |