Runes · Hagal’s ætt

Sowilo

Sound: s · The name: sun

• sun
• warmth
• clarity

What the old rune poems say

All three poems know the sun. In the Old English poem it is ‘ever a joy in the hopes of seafarers when they journey away over the fishes’ bath, until the courser of the deep bears them to land’. The Norwegian poem calls it ‘the light of the world’, the Icelandic one ‘shield of the clouds and shining ray and destroyer of ice’.

How it is read today

Modern rune readers read Sowilo as the rune of the sun: light, warmth and a clear way ahead. The modern books speak of strength from within and of things coming into view. This site does not show the shape of the s-rune, because a stylised form of it was a Nazi emblem and is banned in Germany; the old name means sun, and calling it the ‘Sig rune’, the victory rune, is a Nazi-era renaming. Modern books give it no reversed meaning.

Reversed

This rune looks the same turned round; modern books give it no reversed meaning.

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.