ELDER FUTHARK · HAGAL'S AETT · RUNE 13 OF 24
Eihwaz ᛇ
“Yew” · the sound ei
IN A READING
Endurance, the axis between life and death.
REVERSED
Eihwaz looks the same either way up, so it has no reversed reading.
IN MAGIC
Protection, resilience, spiritual journeys.
In the rune poems
Three medieval poems give a short verse to each rune's name, the oldest record of what the names meant. What they stress for Eihwaz: the yew is rough-barked, firm in the earth, guardian of fire.
THE OLD ENGLISH RUNE POEM · ᛇ EOH
Eoh byþ utanunsmeþe treow,heard hrusan fæst,hyrde fyres,wyrtrumun underwreþyd,wyn on eþle.
Known only from George Hickes's printing of 1705; the manuscript burned in the Cotton library fire of 1731.
The Icelandic and Norwegian poems have no verse for Eihwaz: they follow the sixteen-rune Younger Futhark, which gave it up.
The verses are given in their own languages, Old English from Bruce Dickins's edition (1915) as transcribed on Wikisource, Old Icelandic as normalised in Wikipedia's article on the rune poems. Square brackets mark words the editors restored.
In the later rows
Anglo-Saxon futhorc
ᛇEoh
Younger Futhark
Given up when the row was cut to sixteen, about 800.
Hagal's aett
The futhark falls into three rows of eight, the aettir. Eihwaz is number 5 of Hagal's aett:
Learn more in the lessons
- The Elder Futhark Runes · 15 min
- Runes in Magic · 15 min
- The Younger Futhark and the Runestones · 18 min