Rune 8 of 24 · first ætt · /w/
Wunjō rune meaning
Wunjō (ᚹ) is the eighth rune of the Elder Futhark and the last of the first ætt. The reconstructed name means "joy". Only the Old English poem has a stanza for it, and its definition is modest: no suffering, some prosperity, and a good enough house. I read Wunjō as the question of what enough looks like for you, as distinct from what winning looks like.
The name
Reconstructed
Proto-Germanic *wunjō, "joy"; Old English wynn. The letter wynn was used in Old English manuscripts for the w sound long after runes stopped being carved.
Status: reconstructed, supported by the Old English poem and manuscript usage.
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)
“Bliss he enjoys who knows not suffering, sorrow nor anxiety, and has prosperity and happiness and a good enough house.”
Dickins 1915
Norwegian and Icelandic rune poems
no stanza; the Younger Futhark dropped the w rune.
Note what the poem does not say. It does not describe triumph, celebration or abundance. Joy here is the absence of grief plus sufficiency.
What is reconstructed, what is modern
- Reconstructed
"Joy"
Reconstructed, well supported.
- Attested
The modest definition
Attested in the Old English poem.
- Modern
"Success, harmony, fellowship, wishes granted"
Modern keywords that inflate the poem.
- Not in the sources
Any Norse-tradition meaning
None exists in the poems.
- Attested
- in a named, datable source
- Reconstructed
- a scholarly inference from later evidence
- Modern
- twentieth-century or later practice
- Not in the sources
- no source supports it
- Mine
- the reader's own interpretation
How I read it
Mine
Wunjō is the rune I most often have to talk down. People want it to mean the big win. The poem says: no sorrow, enough money, a good enough house. In a reading it asks what the person's actual picture of enough is, and whether the question they asked is really about that picture or about someone else's. 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.