Berkanan
The Elder Futhark rune for the “b” sound. Its name, *berkanan, meant the birch tree.
Meaning
Store norske leksikon gives the reconstructed name *berkana, Old Norse bjarkan, “birch, birch twig”. The Norwegian rune poem says that the birch “has the greenest leaves of any shrub”, and the Icelandic poem calls it “leafy twig and little tree and fresh young shrub”. The Old English poem, under the name beorc, describes a tree that “bears no fruit” yet puts out suckers without seed; Bruce Dickins took this to be the poplar, since “the customary meaning “birch” is here unsuitable”.
Origin and history
The later Scandinavian form of the rune is still seen every day. The Danish encyclopedia Lex describes the Bluetooth logo as two runes joined together, “h-runen og b-runen”, for Harald Bluetooth, the king who raised the great Jelling stone.
Where you’ll see it today
whatdoesthissymbolmean.comBluetooth symbolBluetooth. The angular B marks Bluetooth, and on a phone’s status bar it shows a Bluetooth device is connected.Write in runes
stringmash.comRune translatorTurn English into Elder Futhark, Younger Futhark or Anglo-Saxon runes, with a chart of all 24 Elder Futhark runes.See also
Uruz, Thurisaz, Ansuz, Raido, Kaunan, Gebo.
Sources
- Runer (Store norske leksikon), Store norske leksikon, Runenavn (table of rune names)
- Runic and heroic poems of the old Teutonic peoples, Bruce Dickins (ed. and trans.), 1915, Cambridge University Press (Internet Archive), Anglo-Saxon poem v. 51 and note; Norwegian poem 13; Icelandic poem 13
- beorc (Bosworth–Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary), Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (1898), online edition, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague, entry “beorc”
- Runernes renæssance, Lisbeth M. Imer, 100 danmarkshistorier, Lex, Danmarks Nationalleksikon
Last reviewed September 26, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research