Rune 4 of 24 · first ætt · /a/
Ansuz rune meaning
Ansuz (ᚨ) is the fourth rune of the Elder Futhark. The reconstructed name means "a god, one of the Æsir". The Old English poem turns it into ōs, the mouth, source of all language; the Icelandic poem names Odin outright. I read Ansuz as a question about speech: what needs saying, to whom, and what you fear will happen when you say it.
The name
Reconstructed
Proto-Germanic *ansuz, the word behind Old Norse áss (plural æsir), the family of gods that includes Odin. The Old English poem's ōs can be read as either the Latin word for mouth or a survival of the god word; the poet's description points to mouth.
Status: reconstructed name; the double meaning in Old English is a scholarly discussion, not settled.
What the rune poems say
Attested
Translations: Bruce Dickins, Runic and Heroic Poems of the Old Teutonic Peoples, 1915.
Old English rune poem (manuscript copy from the 10th century; the poem is likely older)
“The mouth is the source of all language, a pillar of wisdom and a comfort to wise men, a blessing and a joy to every knight.”
Dickins 1915
Norwegian rune poem (17th-century copy of a lost 13th-century manuscript)
“Estuary is the way of most journeys; but a scabbard is of swords.”
Dickins 1915; the Norwegian poem reads óss as river mouth
Icelandic rune poem (manuscripts from around 1500)
“God: aged Gautr and prince of Ásgardr and lord of Valhalla.”
Dickins 1915; Gautr is an Odin name
Mouth, river mouth, god: the Old English and Norwegian poets both moved away from the pagan sense, by different routes. The Icelandic poem, written down latest, keeps the god and names him by his kennings.
What is reconstructed, what is modern
- Reconstructed
"A god, one of the Æsir"
Reconstructed.
- Attested
Mouth, estuary, Odin
Attested in the poems named.
- Modern
"Communication, divine inspiration, wisdom" as keywords
Modern composites of the Old English and Icelandic images.
- Modern
Treating Ansuz as "Odin's rune" in a cast
A modern practice; the Icelandic poem supports the association, the Elder Futhark inscriptions do not comment.
- Attested
- in a named, datable source
- Reconstructed
- a scholarly inference from later evidence
- Modern
- twentieth-century or later practice
- Mine
- the reader's own interpretation
How I read it
Mine
Ansuz almost always turns a reading toward what has not been said. The mouth is the source of language; the god of the poem is the one who won the runes by speaking and screaming on the tree. When it lands face up I ask what conversation the question is standing in for. Mine.
Your question
Ask the rune
If this is the question you are carrying, write it in your own words. The first reading is free.