ELDER FUTHARK · FREYR'S AETT · RUNE 8 OF 24
Wunjo ᚹ
“Joy” · the sound w
IN A READING
Harmony, fellowship, contentment.
REVERSED
Sorrow, alienation, strife within a group.
IN MAGIC
Happiness, group harmony, wish fulfilment.
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 Wunjo: joy belongs to one who knows little of sorrow.
THE OLD ENGLISH RUNE POEM · ᚹ WYNN
Wenne bruceþ,ðe can weana lytsares and sorgeand him sylfa hæfþblæd and blysseand eac byrga geniht.
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 Wunjo: 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
ᚹWynn
Younger Futhark
Given up when the row was cut to sixteen, about 800.
Freyr's aett
The futhark falls into three rows of eight, the aettir. Wunjo is number 8 of Freyr'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