Maðr
The fourteenth Younger Futhark rune, transliterated m. Its name means "human being", and the Icelandic poem gives it the line also found in Hávamál: man is the delight of man.
At a glance
- Rune
- ᛘU+16D8
- Unicode name
- RUNIC LETTER LONG-BRANCH-MADR M
- Alphabet
- Younger Futhark
- In use
- c. AD 800 – 1100 (The Viking Age)
- Position
- 14, ætt 3
- Transliteration
- m
- Sound value
- /m/
- Name
- maðr: human being, manAttested
Names
How the rune is called in each tradition, and how securely each name is recorded.
| Form | Language | Meaning | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| maðr | Old Norse | human being, man | Attested |
An asterisk marks a reconstructed form: a word linguists have worked backwards to, not one that appears in any surviving source.
Etymology
Continues Elder Futhark *mannaz. The Icelandic poem gives the memorable line maðr er manns gaman, "man is the delight of man", which also appears in the Old Norse wisdom poem Hávamál.
Sound value
An /m/. The long-branch form is a substantial reshaping of the Elder Futhark character, and the short-twig version reduces it further still.
Variant forms
Alternative shapes for the same rune across regions and periods.
Short-twig maðr
U+16D9
The short-twig form, reduced to a stave with a small cap.
Historical use
Common, and its position in the row matters for anyone decoding cryptic runes. In the Viking-Age futhark maðr stands before lǫgr; the two swapped places in the Middle Ages, under the influence of a Latin alphabet in which l precedes m. Since an ætt-and-position cipher encodes a rune as its number within its group, the same twigs decode to different runes depending on which order the carver was working from.
Rune-poem evidence
The medieval verse that records this rune's name. Original text plus our own translation.
Maðr er moldar auki; mikil er græip á hauki.Man is an increase of the dust; great is the grip of the hawk.(our translation)
Maðr er manns gaman ok moldar auki ok skipa skreytir.Man is the delight of man and an increase of the dust and the adorner of ships.(our translation)
Manuscript tags: homo ("man") and mildingr ("generous ruler").
Man byþ on myrgþe his magan leof: sceal þeah anra gehwylc oðrum swican, forðum drihten wyle dome sine þæt earme flæsc eorþan betæcan.A person in happiness is dear to their kin; yet each of them must fail the other, because by his decree the Lord will commit that wretched flesh to the earth.(our translation)
Attested in
Objects and monuments where this rune can actually be seen.
Still uses the Elder Futhark ᛗ here rather than the reduced ᛘ maðr, which is one of the two places this object shows the alphabet mid-reduction.
An unusually long inscription setting out a complicated inheritance through a woman, Geirlaug: evidence that runestones did real legal work.
- Maeshowe inscriptionsOrkney · 12th century
Name after name cut on the walls of a Neolithic tomb by Norse visitors: this rune over and over. Medieval rather than Viking-Age, like the Bergen material.
- Codex RunicusScania · c. AD 1300
The one runic text of book length, written in the medieval futhork, where this rune appears in continuous prose, page after page, rather than in a memorial formula.
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
Why this entry has none.
None is given here. Modern rune divination is built almost entirely on the Elder Futhark, and no established modern tradition reads the Younger Futhark separately. Inventing a reading for Maðr to fill the space would be exactly the kind of fabrication this site exists to flag, so the field is left empty rather than filled. Its Elder Futhark ancestor is linked further down and does carry a modern reading, labelled as modern. How modern rune meanings were arrived at is a separate discussion.
The same rune in other alphabets
Runes descended from the same original character, so you can follow it through time.
The rest of ætt 3
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.