Kaunan
The Elder Futhark rune for the “k” sound. Its Norse name, kaun, means an ulcer or sore; in England the same rune was called cen, a torch.
Meaning
Store norske leksikon gives the reconstructed name *kauna, Old Norse kaun, “inflammation, sore, boil”. The Norwegian and Icelandic rune poems agree: an ulcer is “fatal to children”. The Old English poem gives the rune the name cen and a different meaning, a torch “known to every living man by its pale, bright flame”, burning where princes sit.
Origin and history
In the oldest inscriptions the rune is a simple angle, like a less-than sign. Bruce Dickins notes that the English cen and the Norse kaun both descend from “the K (<) of the earliest inscriptions”. The Bosworth–Toller dictionary gives the English name as cén, a torch, and Dickins traces the word to “resinous pine-wood”, hence a torch.
An ulcer in the north, a torch in England
The two traditions disagree about the name. The English called the rune a torch; the Norwegian and Icelandic poems call it a sore. The reconstructed Elder Futhark name in Store norske leksikon, *kauna, follows the Norse one.
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, Gebo, Wunjo.
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. 16 and note; Norwegian poem 6; Icelandic poem 6
- cén (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 “cén”
Last reviewed September 26, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research