Runes · Hagal’s ætt
Perthro
Sound: p · The name: unknown
- the unknown
- chance
- what is hidden
What the old rune poems say
Nobody knows what this rune’s name meant. The Old English poem says that peorth is ‘a source of recreation and amusement to the great, where warriors sit blithely together in the banqueting-hall’; scholars have guessed at a gaming piece, but it remains a guess. The Norse poems have no stanza for it.
How it is read today
Modern rune readers make Perthro the rune of the unknown, of chance and of what is still hidden. The modern books build on the guess of a game and read it as fate or secrets, although the word’s meaning is lost. Here even the modern reading stands on very little, and this page says so.
Reversed
Modern books read it reversed as something left unsaid, or an unwelcome surprise. That is a modern device.
As your rune of the day
Not everything needs an answer today. Leave one question open.
Do something today just for the pleasure of it, like the warriors in the old poem’s hall.
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.