Methodology and evidence labels
Most confusion about runes comes from mixing four different kinds of claim together. This site keeps them apart, visibly, on every page.
Search for a rune meaning and you will typically get a confident paragraph that blends a medieval poem, a linguistic reconstruction, a scholarly dispute and a 1982 divination manual into a single voice. None of the seams are visible, and there is no way to tell which part rests on what.
Every substantive claim on this site carries one of four labels instead. They appear as coloured badges next to the claim, and they are enforced by the type system rather than left to an author's memory: a claim cannot be published without one.
The four labels
Directly supported by surviving inscriptions, medieval manuscripts or the rune poems.
Example: The Younger Futhark rune ᚦ is called þurs, "giant". Both Norse rune poems say so directly.
Widely argued by runologists or historical linguists, but not recorded in a surviving source.
Example: The Elder Futhark rune ᚠ was called *fehu. No source records this; it is worked backwards from Old English feoh, Old Norse fé and Gothic faihu.
Specialists disagree, or the surviving evidence supports more than one reading.
Example: The name of ᛉ may mean "elk" or may mean "protection". The argument has run for a century without resolution, and the Old English poem calls it a marsh plant instead.
A contemporary interpretation (divination, neopagan practice, tattoo symbolism or popular culture), not a historical attestation.
Example: ᛉ means protection and wards off harm. This is a twentieth-century reading, not a historical one.
Editorial rules
- Reconstructions are marked with an asterisk. A form written *fehu is a hypothesis. A form written feoh is recorded in a manuscript. The build fails if a starred form is labelled attested, or an unstarred one labelled reconstructed.
- Modern meanings are never presented as historical. They appear in their own section, with a note saying where the reading came from and roughly how old it is.
- Disagreement is reported, not resolved. Where the rune poems conflict, as they do for úr and kaun, we say so rather than picking the more appealing option silently.
- Inscriptions are cited so you can look them up. Scandinavian inscriptions carry their Rundata signature:
U 29,DR 42,Ög 136. English and Continental material has no Rundata signature because it is catalogued in a different tradition, so those are identified by name and findspot instead. Either way the point is that you can check them without trusting us. - Entries are as long as the evidence allows. The Northumbrian rune cealc gets a short entry because there is very little to say about it. Padding it to match the others would be dishonest.
- Translations of the rune poems are our own. The medieval texts are public domain; a modern scholar's translation is not. Ours are deliberately literal so they can be checked against the original.
- Codepoints are generated, not typed. Every runic character on this site is verified against the Unicode Character Database at build time.
What is checked automatically
A content validator runs before every build and refuses to publish if any of these fail:
- Every glyph matches its declared Unicode codepoint and official character name.
- Every source citation resolves to a real entry in the bibliography.
- Every cross-reference between entries points at a page that exists.
- Every rune entry cites at least two sources and has at least one poem stanza or inscription; every inscription, symbol and guide cites at least one.
- Every claim carries a valid evidence level, and prose fields meet a minimum length.
- Every rune the transliterator can emit is a real, assigned runic codepoint.
After the build, a second pass checks that every internal link in the generated HTML resolves to a real page, and that every block of structured data parses.
When this was last checked
The content was last read end to end against its sources on . That date is what the dateModified in every page's structured data and the lastmod in the sitemap report, and it is shown in the footer of every page.
It is deliberately one date for the whole site rather than a date on each entry. Stamping a review date on all 74 rune entries individually would assert 74 separate review events, and filling that field by copying one day across every page would be precisely the kind of unearned precision the evidence labels exist to prevent. One date, covering a review that actually happened, says more and claims less.
What this site does not do
- It does not give readings. Modern divinatory meanings are documented as a cultural practice, not offered as guidance.
- It does not make claims about outcomes. Nothing here is medical, psychological, legal or financial advice.
- It does not claim specialist review. The site is written by one person, named on the about page, working from the published literature; no runologist has reviewed the content, and that limitation is stated plainly rather than papered over. Sources are given for every claim so the material can be checked independently. One class of statement is different, and is worth naming: where a page says that a symbol is currently popular in tattoo work or widely sold as a Viking design, that is an observation of the present-day market, not a finding anyone has published. The sources on those claims cover what can be checked, which is what the historical record does and does not contain.
Current scope
74 rune entries across 3 alphabets, plus the medieval runes as a chart. 32 inscribed objects and manuscript sources the dictionary cites, plus 1 it does not, 8 Norse symbols, 25 long-form guides, 47 works in the bibliography, and the complete text of the rune poems with original translations.