Cast runes five ways (including the Norns and Tacitus' lots) with your question, on carved pebbles or wooden staves that tumble onto a white cloth — or shake a leather bag of all 24 and reach in for each stone yourself, laying it face down and turning it over by hand, with the click of stone or wood if you like; carve any rune yourself, tracing each stroke until it is cut and stained red; see which runes keep returning in your casts, make bindrunes, write a name along a runestone's serpent, and browse all 24 by aett with their lore and galdr — read aloud, syllable by syllable, if you like. Show the 24 as the Anglo-Saxon futhorc or the sixteen-rune Younger Futhark, with the old names, and see what is ancient and what is modern. Carve a rune and the Latin letter for its sound side by side on a wooden board, and see why runes have no level strokes. Read six real inscriptions for yourself, rune by rune with the row as your key — the Vimose comb, the Øvre Stabu spearhead, the Kylver stone's whole futhark, the golden horn of Gallehus, the Noleby stone's runes “of divine origin” and King Gorm's stone at Jelling — and turn the runic calendar to any year, with its golden-number rune for the new moons and its Sunday rune, the month laid out on a stave. Spell a word yourself on a keyboard of runes, in the Elder Futhark or the sixteen of the Younger, and have it checked by sound, rune by rune; write a word in the branch runes of the Viking-age cipher and decode one; and learn the row by doing — which rune, by name, meaning, sound or its form in a later row, and the futhark laid in order against the clock.
Free to use. Members also get: the Norns, three-rune, five-rune and Tacitus casts, the bindrune maker, and each rune's galdr chanted aloud. Membership
mixer7 lessons explain the ideas behind this tool.
🔒 For members
The bindrune maker, which joins two to four runes on one stave as a single sign to carve or download, is for members.
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Transliterate a name or word into the Elder Futhark — for a talisman or your journal. (Runes follow sound, not spelling, so adjust if it looks wrong: “ph” is better written as “f”.)
Many Swedish runestones of the 11th century run their inscription along the body of a serpent. They were painted, too: traces of red and black survive, and the runic band was often red. Most of the paint has worn away; the red seen on runestones today is modern.
Runes follow sound, not spelling, and a rune was not carved twice running. Spell a word on the keys below and see how the row would have written it. In the Younger Futhark sixteen runes carried every sound of Old Norse: k and g share Kaun, t and d share Týr, b and p share Bjarkan, and each vowel rune stands for several vowels.
The rune-carvers had a cipher. Each rune is given as two numbers, its ætt and its place in it, and the numbers are cut as strokes on a stave: those on the left count the ætt, those on the right the rune. The Rök stone in Östergötland, carved in the ninth century, hides part of its text this way, and so do stones in Orkney. To make it harder the ættir were usually counted backwards, Týr’s first — though some carvers kept the plain order.
ÆTT 1 · TÝR'S
1 ᛏ2 ᛒ3 ᛘ4 ᛚ5 ᛦ
ÆTT 2 · HAGAL'S
1 ᚼ2 ᚾ3 ᛁ4 ᛅ5 ᛋ
ÆTT 3 · FREYR'S
1 ᚠ2 ᚢ3 ᚦ4 ᚬ5 ᚱ6 ᚴ
WRITE IN BRANCH RUNES
ᚱᚢᚾᛅᚱ
ᚱ 3:5 · ᚢ 3:2 · ᚾ 2:2 · ᛅ 2:4 · ᚱ 3:5
READ A SECRET WORD
Count the strokes on each side, find the rune in the key, and tap it.
Words are spelled here as the Younger Futhark would spell them (d as t, g as k, o and w as u). The ciphers took other shapes too — tent runes on the arms of an X, hook runes, fish-shaped runes — all on the same principle of ætt and place.
Runes were made to be carved in wood. Almost every stroke stands upright or slants, so the knife crosses the grain cleanly; a level stroke would run along it, splitting the wood or vanishing among its lines. That is the usual explanation of their shapes, and why the runes have no level bars where Latin letters do. Choose a sound and carve the two side by side.
The sound f: F and ᚠ Fehu
2 of the Latin letter's strokes run along the grain; none of the rune's do. Those are drawn faint and broken, as they would be on the wood.
Most scholars think the runes were adapted from a Mediterranean alphabet, Latin or one of the North Italic scripts; carving in wood would explain why their bars slant.
Six objects that still speak, from a comb dropped in a bog about AD 160 to a king's memorial stone. Tap a rune, then find its letter in the key below, until the whole line stands in letters — or type the letter. The runes are drawn as they are read, left to right.
A bone comb · A bog at Vimose, Funen, Denmark · About AD 160 · Elder Futhark
The Elder Futhark is divided into three aettir (families) of eight, each named after its first rune or a god. Galdr — chanting a rune's name and sound to wake its power — is a modern practice, shown for each rune.
“Water” · sound l · Tyr's aett
Upright · Emotion, intuition, flow.
Reversed · Confusion, fear, poor judgement.
Magical use · Intuition, dreams, emotional healing.
The rune poems: The sea seems endless to those who venture on it.
In other rows · Anglo-Saxon ᛚ Lagu; Younger Futhark ᛚ Lǫgr.
Galdr · LAGUZLaguzLaguzlulalilelo 🔒 Hear it chanted (members)
The first eight runes, ruled by the fertility god Freyr: wealth, strength, inspiration, journeys, gifts and joy, the good things of the world.
The second eight, named after Hail: forces beyond your control, such as disruption, need, stillness, the turning year and fate.
The last eight, ruled by Tyr, god of justice: honour, growth, partnership, humankind, intuition, breakthrough and inheritance.
KNOW THE FUTHARK
inscriptions from about the 2nd to the 8th century, across northern Europe
Twenty-four runes, the row the tool uses.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Elder Futhark”; Tacitus, Germania 10
A few things to do with this tool, from a first try to a habit. Each one you tick counts as practice for the day, towards your streak and milestones.
Kept in this browser. Notes you send to the journal are kept there as well.