The Elder Futhark
Twenty-four runes, divided into three aetts of eight. Each carries a name, a sound, and a meaning that has survived almost two thousand years. Click any rune below for its full meaning, origin, and reversed reading.
What is the Elder Futhark?
The Elder Futhark is the oldest form of the runic alphabets — twenty-four characters used to write Proto-Germanic and early Old Norse from roughly the second century to the eighth century AD. Its name comes from the first six runes: F, U, Th, A, R, K — futhark, in the same way the English "alphabet" comes from alpha and beta.
The runes were carved into wood, bone, stone, and metal — onto weapons, tools, jewellery, and memorial stones. They were used both for ordinary writing and for magic and divination. Each rune is a letter (a sound) and a meaning (a concept) at once: Fehu is "F" and "cattle/wealth"; Algiz is "Z" and "protection"; Sowilo is "S" and "the sun." Reading runes is, in part, reading the names.
By the Viking Age (c. 750–1050 AD), the simpler Younger Futhark of sixteen runes had largely replaced the Elder system in everyday writing. But the Elder Futhark survived in magical and divinatory contexts, and it is the form that most modern rune-readers work with today.
The Three Aetts
The twenty-four runes are traditionally divided into three groups of eight, called aettir (singular aett) — meaning "family" or "group of eight." Each aett is named after a god whose qualities the runes within it broadly reflect. The aetts give the system its rhythm: a beginning, a middle, and an end; a cycle of birth, struggle, and renewal.
Freyr's Aett
Runes 1–8 — beginnings, abundance, the everyday world. Named after Freyr, god of fertility and prosperity. From cattle (Fehu) to joy (Wunjo) — the building blocks of a good life.
Heimdall's Aett
Runes 9–16 — disruption, constraint, the deeper forces. Named after Heimdall, the watcher at the bridge of the worlds. The harder lessons: hail, need, ice, the long endurance, and finally the sun's return.
Tyr's Aett
Runes 17–24 — order, kinship, transformation. Named after Tyr, the warrior god of justice. From law (Tiwaz) through community and continuity to the dawn of a new cycle (Dagaz).
How to Use This Page
Each rune above links to its own page — the full meaning, the origin and rune-poem stanzas, what it shows in divination, the reversed (merkstave) reading, the symbolism, and how it is used in galdr (rune-magic). The pages are written to be read in any order; you do not need to start at Fehu and work through to Dagaz.
If you want a reading rather than a reference, the free rune reading page draws three runes from this same set in the shape of the Norns — what has been, what is becoming, what should be. If you want to combine runes into a single working glyph, the bind-rune pages show twelve traditional combinations for specific intentions (protection, love, healing, and others).