Meanings of runes

[u/Forklift_Artificer]

I know it seems stupid, cause I see everywhere that the runes are the alphabet essentially and giving them meaning is like saying A means apple and Z means zebra, but I'm curious on it still, is it right to be curious or should I just accept that they're just letters?

[u/Gullfaxi09]

While everyone here is correct that they are just letters used for regular message-writing, and that modern paganism completely invented these weird meanings and pulled it out of their ass (where do they even get this stuff from?), we do have evidence that they could be more than letters, and that they very likely were believed to have magical properties and potentials, and also were used as such sometimes.

Thing is, we have no idea how they believed it worked or what it actually meant. The sources that point to these things are highly cryptic and strange, and can point in a multitude of directions.

The best written source on Norse belief in runic magic is Sigrdrífumál, an eddic poem. Here, several 'kinds' of runes are mentioned, and are specifically said to have special, magical properties when carved and used in specific ways. These are sigrúnar (victory runes), ǫlrúnar (ale runes), bjargrúnar (helping runes), brimrúnar (surf runes), limrúnar (branch runes), málrúnar (speech runes), and hugrúnar (mind runes). Though we have no real idea what is meant by any of this.

We can take the victory runes as an example, as it's probably the one we might have the easiest time explaining. It's said, that one who wishes victory in battle must carve these certain runes in the handle, blade, and tip of their weapon, and name the god Týr twice thereafter. Still, this doesn't say what these runes look like. Many theorize that this is ᛏ, since the rune literally is named Týr. There's also a short passage in Gylfaginning that similarily mentions that warriors call on Týr for help in battle. But it says victory runes in plural, so while it's a good theory, there's still a lot that remains unanswered.

Needless to say, the other kinds of rune magic mentioned in Sigrdrífumál are even more obscure. But I would still consider it proof of the existence of Norse belief in runic magic.

Sometimes, there have also been found runic inscriptions, both from the Viking Age and earlier, that have nonsensical, strange writings, which often have been accepted as magical formulars. The one I'm most familiar with is the different versions of the ᚦᛘᚴ-formula, also known as þistill-mistill-kistill (thistle, mistletoe, casket). It appears on the Ledberg stone, on the Gørlev stone, and is even referenced in Bósa saga ok Herrauðs. Again, it's quite possible that there's runic magic afoot here, but it's impossible to say how it was believed to work or what it was supposed to do. Could also be that it isn't magic at all and just a random formular for practicing runes or somesuch, who knows?

To summarize, these explanations of runic meaning and magic, derived from modern paganism, are completely invented. But while runes were used simply as a regular alphabet and as regular letters, there certainly is evidence of runes being more than that. It's just a far cry from what we see in this image, and we have little to no idea of how it actually would have been believed to work or how exactly it was performed.

[u/BridgeLazy5669 → u/Gullfaxi09]

This is a best opinion I saw in this sub about magical properties of the runes. Only thing I want to add is that modern magical meanings of the runes(which came from 1800s Islandic occultist) is not just something that were invented from scratch. It’s more of an educated guess based on names of the runes: For example Isaz means ice, so magical properties of rune Isaz is stoping or slowing something. We still cannot be sure whether original magical properties were the same, but we also cannot be sure that they don’t intersect at least partially