Runes · Týr’s ætt
Berkanan
Sound: b · The name: birch
- growth
- new beginnings
- care
What the old rune poems say
The Old English poem describes a tree that ‘bears no fruit’ and yet, without seed, ‘brings forth suckers’, with splendid branches and a lofty crown; Dickins translated it as poplar, others as birch. The Norwegian poem: birch has the greenest leaves of any shrub, and ‘Loki was fortunate in his deceit’. The Icelandic poem has ‘leafy twig and little tree and fresh young shrub’.
How it is read today
Modern rune readers see Berkanan as the rune of growth and new beginnings. The birch is among the first trees to come into leaf in spring, and the modern books speak of care, of tending what is young and of quiet renewal. This is a modern reading.
Reversed
Modern books read it reversed as growth that stalls, or care that falls short. That is a modern device.
As your rune of the day
Tend something young today: a plant, a plan, a friendship.
A new beginning can be very small. Let one happen today.
Reading runes as an oracle is modern, from Guido von List (1908) and Ralph Blum (1982); the people who carved them, Vikings included, used them for writing, names and charm words.