Runes · Hagal’s ætt
Isaz
Sound: i · The name: ice
- stillness
- pause
- clarity
What the old rune poems say
The Old English poem: ice is very cold and immeasurably slippery, ‘it glistens as clear as glass’, like gems, ‘a floor wrought by the frost, fair to look upon’. The Norwegian poem calls ice the broad bridge and adds that the blind man must be led. The Icelandic poem has ‘bark of rivers and roof of the wave’.
How it is read today
Modern rune readers read Isaz as the rune of stillness, a time when things are frozen in place. The modern books do not treat this as bad; they speak of pausing, of waiting until the ice will bear your weight, and of the clear view that a cold day gives. This is a modern reading.
Reversed
This rune looks the same turned round; modern books give it no reversed meaning.
As your rune of the day
Not every day needs movement. Let one thing rest today.
Look at a question today without deciding it yet.
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.