Runes · Hagal’s ætt
Naudiz
Sound: n · The name: need, constraint
- need
- patience
- what has to be done
What the old rune poems say
The Old English poem says that trouble is oppressive to the heart, ‘yet often it proves a source of help and salvation’ to everyone who heeds it in good time. The Norwegian poem: ‘Constraint gives scant choice; a naked man is chilled by the frost.’ The Icelandic poem calls it ‘grief of the bond-maid’ and toilsome work.
How it is read today
Modern rune readers take Naudiz as the rune of need: what is lacking and what has to be done. The modern books follow the Old English poem and read it as a hardship that teaches, if it is looked at early. They speak of patience and of telling a want from a need. 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
Ask yourself what you really need today, and what you only want.
A difficulty faced early weighs half as much. Look at one 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.