| Name | Proto-Germanic | Old English | Old Norse | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| *Tē₂waz | Tī/Tīr | Týr | ||
| Shape | Elder Futhark | Futhorc | Younger Futhark | |
 | |  | ||
| Unicode | ᛏ U+16CF | ᛏ U+16CF | ᛐ U+16D0 | |
| Transliteration | t | |||
| Transcription | t | t, d | ||
| IPA | [t] | [t],[d] | ||
| Position in rune-row | 17 | 12 | ||
The t-rune ᛏ is named after Týr , and was identified with this god. The reconstructed Proto-Germanic name is *Tîwaz or *Teiwaz. Tiwaz rune was an ideographic symbol for a spear.[ citation needed ]
Tiwaz is mentioned in all three rune poems. In the Icelandic and Norwegian poems, the rune is associated with the god Týr.
| Language | Stanza | Translation | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Old Norwegian | ᛏ Týr er æinendr ása; opt værðr smiðr blása. [1] | Tyr is a one-handed god; often has the smith to blow. [2] | "smiðr blása" means to blow on coals, making them hot for metal working |
| Old Icelandic | ᛏ Týr er einhendr áss ok ulfs leifar ok hofa hilmir Mars tiggi. [3] | Tyr = god with one hand | "Mars tiggi" is a "more or less accurate [Latin gloss]". [4] |
| Old English | ᛏ Tir biþ tacna sum, healdeð trẏƿa ƿel | (?) is a (guiding) star; well does it keep faith | "Fame, honour" is a gloss written alongside the rune. Several interpretations have been offered, typically involving association with the north star, as the words tacna and færyld have astronomical connotations (used for "sign of the zodiac" and "path of a planet", respectively).[ citation needed ] |
Multiple Tiwaz runes either stacked atop one another to resemble a tree-like shape, or repeated after one another, appear several times in Germanic paganism:
According to the runologist Lars Magnar Enoksen, the Tiwaz rune is referred to in a stanza in Sigrdrífumál , a poem in the Poetic Edda . [7]
Sigrdrífumál tells that Sigurd has slain the dragon Fafnir and arrives at a fortress of shields on top of a mountain which is lit by great fires. [8] In the fortress, he finds an enchanted sleeping valkyrie whom he wakes by cutting open her corslet with his sword. The grateful valkyrie, Sigrdrífa, offers him the secrets of the runes in return for delivering her from the sleep, on condition that he shows that he has no fear. [7] She begins by teaching him that if he wants to achieve victory in battle, he is to carve "victory runes" on his sword and twice say the name "Týr" - the name of the Tiwaz rune. [7]
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Futhorc manuscripts give different names to the t-rune. Sangallensis 270 (9th century) and Vindobonensis 795 (9th century) call the rune "Ti", while Cotton MS Domitian A IX (10th century?) calls it "Tir", and the Byrhtferth's Manuscript (12th century) calls it "Tyr". Ti may be an uninflected form of the possessive "Tiwes" as found in "Tiwesdæg", which would make it the name of an English god. Similar spellings of this god's name (such as Tii) are attested to in Old English. [11]
The Týr rune is commonly used by Germanic neopagans to symbolize veneration of the god Týr.
The Týr rune in Guido von List's Armanen Futharkh was based on the version found in the Younger Futhark. List's runes were later adopted and modified by Karl Maria Wiligut, who was responsible for their adoption by the Nazis, and they were subsequently widely used on insignia and literature during the Third Reich. It was the badge of the Sturmabteilung training schools, the Reichsführerschulen in Nazi Germany. In World War II, it was adopted as the unit insignia of the 32nd SS Volunteer Grenadier Division "30 Januar".
In Neo-Nazism it has appeared, together with the Sowilo rune, in the emblem of the Kassel-based think tank Thule Seminar. It has also appeared as the former logo of the fashion label Thor Steinar, which was banned in Germany over resemblance to SS officer uniforms, [12] and the Scandinavia-based Nordic Resistance Movement which uses the symbol onto a diamond with stripes (in the same shape as the Hitlerjugend flag) in green, white, and black. (It might also be noted that both these uses were technically incorrect, since both Thor and Thule would be spelled with a thurisaz, ᚦ, rune.) The symbol was one of the numerous Nazi/neo-Nazi and fascist symbols/slogans used by the perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings Brenton Harrison Tarrant alongside the Black Sun, the Othala/Odal rune, the Celtic Cross, the Kolovrat swastika, the Fourteen Words, and the Archangel Michael's Cross of the pro-Nazi Romanian organization Iron Guard. [13]
In 2018 the symbol was incorporated on the sweaters of the 2018 Norwegian Alpine ski team. [14]
The sweaters were however quickly pulled from market, when the Nazi and far-right association raised controversy. [15]
Týr is a god in Germanic mythology, a valorous and powerful member of the Æsir and patron of warriors and mythological heroes. In Norse mythology, which provides most of the surviving narratives about gods among the Germanic peoples, Týr sacrifices his right hand to the monstrous wolf Fenrir, who bites it off when he realizes the gods have bound him. Týr is foretold of being consumed by the similarly monstrous dog Garmr during the events of Ragnarök.
Æsir or ēse are gods in Germanic paganism. In Old Nordic religion and mythology, the precise meaning of the term "Æsir" is debated, with it being able to refer to both the gods in general or specifically to one of the main families of gods, in contrast to the Vanir, with whom they waged war, ultimately leading to a joining of the families. The term can further be used to describe local gods that were believed to live in specific features in the landscape such as fells. In the Old English Wið færstice, the Ēse are referred to, along with elves, as harmful beings that could cause a stabbing pain, although exactly how they were conceived of by the author of the text is unclear.
Othala, also known as ēðel and odal, is a rune that represents the o and œ phonemes in the Elder Futhark and the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc writing systems respectively. Its name is derived from the reconstructed Proto-Germanic *ōþala- "heritage; inheritance, inherited estate". As it does not occur in Younger Futhark, it disappears from the Scandinavian record around the 8th century, however its usage continued in England into the 11th century, where it was sometimes further used in manuscripts as a shorthand for the word ēðel ("homeland"), similar to how other runes were sometimes used at the time.
A rune is a letter in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write Germanic languages before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised purposes thereafter. In addition to representing a sound value, runes can be used to represent the concepts after which they are named (ideographs). Scholars refer to instances of the latter as Begriffsrunen. The Scandinavian variants are also known as fuþark, or futhark, these names derived from the first six letters of the script, ⟨ᚠ⟩, ⟨ᚢ⟩, ⟨ᚦ⟩, ⟨ᚨ⟩/⟨ᚬ⟩, ⟨ᚱ⟩, and ⟨ᚲ⟩/⟨ᚴ⟩, corresponding to the Latin letters ⟨f⟩, ⟨u⟩, ⟨þ⟩/⟨th⟩, ⟨a⟩, ⟨r⟩, and ⟨k⟩. The Anglo-Saxon variant is futhorc, or fuþorc, due to changes in Old English of the sounds represented by the fourth letter, ⟨ᚨ⟩/⟨ᚩ⟩.
The Younger Futhark, also called Scandinavian runes, is a runic alphabet and a reduced form of the Elder Futhark, with only 16 characters, in use from about the 9th century, after a "transitional period" during the 7th and 8th centuries. The reduction, somewhat paradoxically, happened at the same time as phonetic changes that led to a greater number of different phonemes in the spoken language, when Proto-Norse evolved into Old Norse. Also, the writing custom avoided carving the same rune consecutively for the same sound, so the spoken distinction between long and short vowels was lost in writing. Thus, the language included distinct sounds and minimal pairs that were written the same.
The Elder Futhark, also known as the Older Futhark, Old Futhark, or Germanic Futhark, is the oldest form of the runic alphabets. It was a writing system used by Germanic peoples for Northwest Germanic dialects in the Migration Period. Inscriptions are found on artifacts including jewelry, amulets, plateware, tools, and weapons, as well as runestones in Scandinavia, from the 2nd to the 10th centuries.
Algiz is the name conventionally given to the "z-rune" ᛉ of the Elder Futhark runic alphabet. Its transliteration is z, understood as a phoneme of the Proto-Germanic language, the terminal *z continuing Proto-Indo-European terminal *s via Verner's law.
The Kylver stone, listed in the Rundata catalog as runic inscription G 88, is a Swedish runestone which dates from about 400 AD. It is notable for its listing of each of the runes in the Elder Futhark.
Thor Steinar is a German clothing brand manufactured by Thor Steinar Mediatex GmbH, a subsidiary of International Brands General Trading, a Dubai-based company.
Jera is the conventional name of the j-rune ᛃ of the Elder Futhark, from a reconstructed Common Germanic stem *jēra- meaning "harvest, (good) year".
*Naudiz is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name of the n-rune ᚾ, meaning "need, distress". In the Anglo-Saxon futhorc, it is continued as ᚾnyd, in the Younger Futhark as ᚾ, Icelandic naud and Old Norse nauðr. The corresponding Gothic letter is 𐌽 n, named nauþs. The valkyrie Sigrdrífa in Sigrdrífumál talks about the rune as a beer-rune and that "You should learn beer-runes if you don’t want another man’s wife to abuse your trust if you have a tryst. Carve them on the drinking-horn and on the back of your hand, and carve the rune ᚾ on your fingernail."
The rune ᚦ is called Thurs in the Icelandic and Norwegian rune poems. In the Anglo-Saxon rune poem it is called thorn, whence the name of the letter þ derived. It is transliterated as þ, and has the sound value of a voiceless dental fricative.
Cipher runes, or cryptic runes, are the cryptographical replacement of the letters of the runic alphabet.
Seeland-II-C is a Scandinavian bracteate from Zealand, Denmark, that has been dated to the Migration period. The bracteate bears an Elder Futhark inscription which reads as:
A bind rune or bindrune is a Migration Period Germanic ligature of two or more runes. They are extremely rare in Viking Age inscriptions, but are common in earlier (Proto-Norse) and later (medieval) inscriptions.
There is some evidence that, in addition to being a writing system, runes historically served purposes of magic. This is the case from the earliest epigraphic evidence of the Roman to the Germanic Iron Age, with non-linguistic inscriptions and the alu word. An erilaz appears to have been a person versed in runes, including their magic applications.
Staveless runes were the climax of the simplification process in the evolution of runic alphabets that had started when the Elder Futhark was superseded by the Younger Futhark. In order to create the staveless runes, vertical marks were dropped from individual letters. The name "staveless" is not entirely accurate, since the i rune consists of a whole stave and the f, þ, k and the s runes consist of shortened main staves.
The medieval runes, or the futhork, was a Scandinavian runic alphabet that evolved from the Younger Futhark after the introduction of stung runes at the end of the Viking Age. These stung runes were regular runes with the addition of either a dot diacritic or bar diacritic to indicate that the rune stood for one of its secondary sounds. The medieval futhork was fully formed in the early 13th century. Due to the expansion of its character inventory, it was essentially possible to have each character in an inscription correspond to only one phoneme, something which was virtually impossible in Younger Futhark with its small inventory of 16 runes.
The Dalecarlian runes, or dalrunes, was a late version of the runic script that was in use in the Swedish province of Dalarna until the 20th century. The province has consequently been called the "last stronghold of the Germanic script".
Gårdstånga runestone DR 331 is a runestone located at Runstenshögen in Lundagård, in Lund.
