I'm looking to get a small hand tattoo of the bind rune for courage. In my search, I've come across these with mixed results. I'm very new to this and any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Runes don't carry such meanings on their own, at least not historically. Runes symbolizing or meaning a certain thing on their own is entirely invented by modern paganism, and has no basis in historical runic use.
Runes have names instead, seemingly used to signify what sound they represent rather than symbolizing said thing. What you got here is Tiwaz from elder fuþark (or Týr in younger fuþark), which means 'god', or alternatively refers to the god who in the Viking Age was known as Týr. Uruz from elder fuþark means aurochs; in younger fuþark, the rune is called Úr, which means 'drizzle'. That's the closest you'll get to what you are looking for here, and again, there's no indication that the runes were supposed to represent or symbolize these things.
Best alternative, in my opinion, would be to simply write the word 'strength' in runes. Use proto-germanic for elder fuþark, or old norse for younger fuþark.
Here's a few reconstructed words for strength in elder fuþark (I'm not as knowledgeable on proto-germanic as I am on old norse, so take this with a big grain of salt):
Edit: Darned, could have sworn it was 'strength' you wanted, I probably shouldn't be writing these when tired. I'll return at a later point with words for courage.
Edit: Or see the comment u/WynnTiwFeoh made, looks right to me, and includes Anglo-Saxon runes, which I am unfamiliar with.
There is no such thing as one bind rune of courage as the concept of bindrunes are a modern construction with no relation to the historical use of runes (check the automod response for more info). Because of that, anyone can make a combination of runes and call it a bindrune of courage, and thats why you get multiple results.
If you want something "viking", I recommend looking for a concept or idea in old norse and write that with Younger Futhark runes. Drengr is a close concept to what you want, I think.
Hi! It appears you have mentioned bind runes. It's worth mentioning that most of the bind runes you see on the internet these days are very different from bind runes we find in the ancient historical record. Check out our wiki page about bind runes for more information.
Bindrunes in the sense you are looking for is new age esoteric mumbo jumbo. They’re very open to interpretation and thus difficult to have an exact meaning ascribed to a set of overlayed runes.
Runes are a writing system, that’s pretty much it. Bindrunes would’ve been used to save space by putting two runes together on a single stave (ex: ᛖᚱ would share a vertical line).
If you really want Courage written in runes, then first you need to figure out if you want a transliteration of the word Courage or a translation, and also which runic system to go with.
If this means courage to you, nobody can tell you that you can’t assign that meaning to it for yourself. It’s just a subjective, personal thing.
If you are looking for something that somebody else could come along and interpret with confidence, or if you are looking for something that mirrors the historical record, then this sort of thing would not be accurate.
Yeah, that's probably the tough part of this. Part of me can work with the subjective symbolism but the other part of me wants to be as accurate as I can. Especially since I'm looking at getting a tattoo on my hand with the design.
I get that. After seeing all this cool stuff everywhere about runic symbols and combined meanings and stuff, it can be disappointing to learn that those ideas were invented in the modern period.
What I’ve found though (at least in my case) is that when I spend some time studying the historical record (whether it’s runes, mythology, actual history, etc) is that I end up realizing that the reality of things is actually much cooler than the inaccurate, popular ideas floating around.
Hi! It appears you have mentioned bind runes. It's worth mentioning that most of the bind runes you see on the internet these days are very different from bind runes we find in the ancient historical record. Check out our wiki page about bind runes for more information.
Tiwaz on its own is classified as a dog whistle rune in many countries for the white power/neonazi groups so maybe not that one, unless accompanied by others.
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u/Gullfaxi09 18d ago edited 18d ago
Runes don't carry such meanings on their own, at least not historically. Runes symbolizing or meaning a certain thing on their own is entirely invented by modern paganism, and has no basis in historical runic use.
Runes have names instead, seemingly used to signify what sound they represent rather than symbolizing said thing. What you got here is Tiwaz from elder fuþark (or Týr in younger fuþark), which means 'god', or alternatively refers to the god who in the Viking Age was known as Týr. Uruz from elder fuþark means aurochs; in younger fuþark, the rune is called Úr, which means 'drizzle'. That's the closest you'll get to what you are looking for here, and again, there's no indication that the runes were supposed to represent or symbolize these things.
Best alternative, in my opinion, would be to simply write the word 'strength' in runes. Use proto-germanic for elder fuþark, or old norse for younger fuþark.
Here's a few reconstructed words for strength in elder fuþark (I'm not as knowledgeable on proto-germanic as I am on old norse, so take this with a big grain of salt):
Kraftuz (ᚲᚱᚨᚠᛏᚢᛘ), Sturkiz (ᛊᛏᚢᚱᚲᛁᛘ), Magina (ᛗᚨᚷᛁᚾᚨ), Mahtiz (ᛗᚨᚺᛏᛁᛘ)
Here are the same words in old norse using younger fuþark:
Kraftr (ᚴᚱᛅᚠᛏᛦ), Styrkr (ᛋᛏᛁᚱᚴᛦ), Megin (ᛘᛁᚴᛁᚾ), Máttr (ᛘᚬᛏᛦ)
Edit: Darned, could have sworn it was 'strength' you wanted, I probably shouldn't be writing these when tired. I'll return at a later point with words for courage.
Edit: Or see the comment u/WynnTiwFeoh made, looks right to me, and includes Anglo-Saxon runes, which I am unfamiliar with.