Runes · Freyr’s ætt
Wunjo
Sound: w · The name: joy
- joy
- contentment
- belonging
What the old rune poems say
Only the Old English poem covers this rune. Wynn, it says, is the bliss of one ‘who knows not suffering, sorrow nor anxiety, and has prosperity and happiness and a good enough house’. That last phrase is worth keeping.
How it is read today
Modern rune readers take Wunjo as the rune of joy and contentment. The modern books speak of the happiness of belonging, of things going well among people, and of being content with what is good enough. This is a 20th-century reading built on a single Old English stanza.
Reversed
Modern books read it reversed as low spirits, or a feeling of not belonging. That is a modern device.
As your rune of the day
Notice one thing today that is simply good enough, and let it be.
Joy is often small. Look for it in an ordinary hour.
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.