Haglaz
The ninth Elder Futhark rune and the first of the second ætt, transliterated h. Its name means "hail", and all three rune poems agree, making it the best-attested rune name of them all.
At a glance
- Rune
- ᚺU+16BA
- Unicode name
- RUNIC LETTER HAGLAZ H
- Alphabet
- Elder Futhark
- In use
- c. AD 150 – 800 (Roman Iron Age to the beginning of the Viking Age)
- Position
- 9, ætt 2
- Transliteration
- h
- Sound value
- /h/
- Name
- *haglaz: hailReconstructed
Names
How the rune is called in each tradition, and how securely each name is recorded.
| Form | Language | Meaning | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| *haglaz | Proto-Germanic | hailAlso widely written *hagalaz, which is the form this rune's URL and cross-references use. The two are the same reconstruction; the literature uses both. | Reconstructed |
| hægl | Old English | hail | Attested |
| hagall | Old Norse | hail | Attested |
An asterisk marks a reconstructed form: a word linguists have worked backwards to, not one that appears in any surviving source.
Etymology
All three traditions agree on "hail", and all three poems describe it as a kind of grain. This is the most securely established of all the rune names.
Sound value
An /h/, probably also a velar fricative [x] in some positions.
Variant forms
Alternative shapes for the same rune across regions and periods.
Double-barred hægl
U+16BB
The two-barred form, standard in Anglo-Saxon inscriptions and common in later continental material.
Younger Futhark long-branch hagall
U+16BC
The Viking-Age form, shaped like a vertical stave crossed by two slanting strokes.
Historical use
Opens the second ætt. The Younger Futhark form of this rune, ᚼ hagall, is what the cipher systems take their look from: a rune is encoded as two counts (which ætt, and which position within it) drawn as twigs on a stave. The names for those cipher families are old rather than modern; kvistrúnir and tjaldrúnir come from the Icelandic tradition, and hahalrúnar and ísrúnir go back to the continental ísruna tract. Nordby established how the systems actually operate across the surviving corpus.
Rune-poem evidence
The medieval verse that records this rune's name. Original text plus our own translation.
Hægl byþ hwitust corna; hwyrft hit of heofones lyfte, wealcaþ hit windes scura; weorþeþ hit to wætere syððan.Hail is the whitest of grains; it whirls down out of the sky, gusts of wind toss it about, and afterwards it turns to water.(our translation)
All three rune poems call hail a "grain". The image is shared inheritance rather than coincidence.
Hagall er kaldastr korna; Kristr skóp hæimenn forna.Hail is the coldest of grains; Christ shaped the world of old.(our translation)
A plain reminder that the rune poems are Christian-era texts, not pagan survivals.
Hagall er kaldakorn ok krapadrífa ok snáka sótt.Hail is cold grain and a driving sleet and the sickness of snakes.(our translation)
Manuscript tags: grando ("hail") and hildingr ("chieftain").
Attested in
Objects and monuments where this rune can actually be seen.
Begins the second group of eight.
- Vimose combFunen, Denmark · c. AD 160
The oldest datable runic inscription of all opens with this rune: harja, five runes cut on a bone comb.
Signatures follow the Scandinavian Runic-text Database so you can look each inscription up directly. Each name links to the object's own entry.
Modern meaning
How this rune is read in contemporary divination, which is a separate question from what it meant historically.
Upright
Read as a destructive event that arrives from outside and cannot be bargained with, but one that passes, as hail turns to water.
Where this comes from: Most modern systems give hagalaz no reversed reading, since the glyph is symmetrical.
Common misconceptions
Claims about this rune that circulate widely and do not hold up.
The "hagal rune" of some modern esoteric systems (a six-armed snowflake shape) is the Younger Futhark hagall form or a modern elaboration of it, not the Elder Futhark hagalaz.
The same rune in other alphabets
Runes descended from the same original character, so you can follow it through time.
The rest of ætt 2
Sources for this entry
Full references are on the sources page. If you think something here is wrong, our corrections policy explains how to say so.