Dagaz
The Elder Futhark rune for the “d” sound. Its name, *dagaz, meant day.
Meaning
Store norske leksikon reconstructs the name as *dagaR; the Old Norse is dagr, “day”. The Old English poem, where the name is dæg, calls day “the glorious light of the Creator”, sent by the Lord, “a source of hope and happiness to rich and poor, and of service to all”.
Origin and history
The rune has no stanza in the Norwegian and Icelandic poems, which were written for the later 16-rune alphabet, the Younger Futhark. That alphabet had no d-rune: Store norske leksikon notes that the t-rune also wrote d. The Bosworth–Toller dictionary glosses the English name as “a day”.
A rune that meant “day”
After the Danish invasion of 866, Bruce Dickins writes, English runes survive only in manuscript alphabets, except for a few letters; ēðel, dæg and man “were occasionally used as shorthand in the MSS”. The d-rune “is regularly found as a grammalogue for dæg in the Rituale of Durham, occasionally too in the Lindisfarne Gospels”, so a scribe could write the single rune for the word day. The Bosworth–Toller dictionary says the same: the rune stands for the letter d and also “for dæg a day”. Lex, the Danish national encyclopedia, calls a rune used for its own name a begrebsrune, a concept rune.
Day and man swapped
The manuscript of the Old English poem burned in 1731, and the text survives in George Hickes's printing of 1705. Above the d-rune Hickes printed m, mann, and above the m-rune d, dæg. Dickins traces the mix-up to “the ignorant scribe” of another manuscript, Cotton Domitian A IX.
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.Read next
- Next in Elder Futhark runesOthalaThe Elder Futhark rune for the “o” sound. Its name meant inherited land, the family estate.
- The same shape in Catholic symbolsMarian crossA cross with a capital M beside it or beneath it, for Mary standing at the foot of the cross. It is best known from the coat of arms of Pope John Paul II.
See also
Uruz, Thurisaz, Ansuz, Raido, Kaunan, Gebo.
Sources
- Runer (Store norske leksikon), Store norske leksikon, Runenavn (table of rune names)
- Futhark (Store norske leksikon), Store norske leksikon
- Runic and heroic poems of the old Teutonic peoples, Bruce Dickins (ed. and trans.), 1915, Cambridge University Press (Internet Archive), Anglo-Saxon poem v. 74
- dæg (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 “dæg”
- Runer (Lex), Lex, Danmarks Nationalleksikon, Runenavne
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from crosses or letters and numbers.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 3, 2026. How we research
Added . Last updated .