Runes · Hagal’s ætt
Jera
Sound: j · The name: year, good harvest
- harvest
- cycles
- patience
What the old rune poems say
The Old English poem calls ger summer, ‘a joy to men, when God, the holy King of Heaven, suffers the earth to bring forth shining fruits for rich and poor alike’. The Norse poems have ár, plenty, under another rune: the Norwegian poem says ‘Frodi was generous’, and the Icelandic one speaks of a good summer and thriving crops.
How it is read today
Modern rune readers see Jera as the rune of the harvest and the turning year. The modern books speak of things that ripen in their own time, of the reward of steady work and of cycles that cannot be hurried. It is a modern reading, and one of the gentlest.
Reversed
This rune looks the same turned round; modern books give it no reversed meaning.
As your rune of the day
Something you began a while ago is ripening. Give it time.
Do one small thing today that will help you in a few months.
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.