Runes · Freyr’s ætt
Raidho
Sound: r · The name: riding, journey
- journey
- rhythm
- setting off
What the old rune poems say
The Old English poem has a dry joke in it: riding ‘seems easy to every warrior while he is indoors’, and quite another thing on the high roads on the back of a stout horse. The Norwegian poem says riding is hard on horses and that Reginn forged the finest sword. The Icelandic poem calls it ‘joy of the horsemen and speedy journey and toil of the steed’.
How it is read today
Modern rune readers see Raidho as the rune of the journey, both the road outside and the course of one’s own life. The modern books speak of rhythm, of travelling at the right pace and of plans that become real once you set off. Some, with the Old English poem, add that a journey always looks easier from the armchair. This is a modern reading.
Reversed
Modern books read it reversed as delay, or a plan that will not move. The old sources know no reversed runes.
As your rune of the day
The old poem says riding is easy indoors. Take one real step on something you have only planned.
Find your own pace today, neither hurried nor stuck.
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.