Rune 5 of 24 · first ætt · /r/
Raidō rune meaning
Raidō (ᚱ) is the fifth rune of the Elder Futhark. The reconstructed name means "ride, journey". All three rune poems keep the sense of riding, each with its own twist: easy from indoors, joy for the rider, toil for the horse. I read Raidō as the distance between the plan and the road, and the question of who is carrying whom.
The name
Reconstructed
Proto-Germanic *raidō, "ride, wagon, journey". Old English rād, Old Norse reið. One of the few names all three traditions agree on.
Status: reconstructed, with strong agreement.
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)
“Riding seems easy to every warrior while he is indoors and very courageous to him who traverses the high-roads on the back of a stout horse.”
Dickins 1915
Norwegian rune poem (17th-century copy of a lost 13th-century manuscript)
“Riding is said to be the worst thing for horses; Reginn forged the finest sword.”
Dickins 1915
Icelandic rune poem (manuscripts from around 1500)
“Riding: joy of the horsemen and speedy journey and toil of the steed.”
Dickins 1915
The Old English poet is dry about it: everyone is brave about the journey while sitting by the fire. The Norse poets shift the cost onto the horse.
What is reconstructed, what is modern
- Reconstructed
"Ride, journey"
Reconstructed, well supported.
- Attested
Indoors versus the road, the horse's toil
Attested.
- Modern
"Travel is coming", "right action", "rhythm"
Modern keywords.
- Modern
Any association with wheels of the year, cycles, or astrology
Modern.
- 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
Raidō is about the gap between deciding and doing, and about cost. Someone always carries the weight of a journey, and it is not always the one who planned it. In a reading about a move, a change of work, or leaving, I ask two things: what does the road look like from the saddle rather than the armchair, and who is the horse. 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.