Isaz
The Elder Futhark rune for the “i” sound, a single upright stroke. Its name, *īsaz, meant ice.
Meaning
Store norske leksikon gives the reconstructed name *īsaR, Old Norse íss, “ice”. The Old English poem describes ice as “very cold and immeasurably slippery”, glistening “as clear as glass”, a floor “wrought by the frost, fair to look upon”. The Norwegian poem calls ice “the broad bridge”; the Icelandic poem, the “bark of rivers and roof of the wave and destruction of the doomed”.
Origin and history
The Bosworth–Toller dictionary records ís as “the name of the Rune ᛁ = i”.
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. 29; Norwegian poem 9; Icelandic poem 9
- ís (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 “ís”
Last reviewed September 26, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research