Naudiz
The Elder Futhark rune for the “n” sound. Its name, *naudiz, meant need, hardship or constraint.
Meaning
Store norske leksikon gives the reconstructed name *naudiR, Old Norse nauð, “need, distress, being stuck”. The Norwegian rune poem says that “constraint gives scant choice”; the Icelandic poem calls it the “grief of the bond-maid and state of oppression and toilsome work”. The Old English poem adds a turn: trouble “is oppressive to the heart”, yet often proves “a source of help and salvation” to anyone who heeds it in time.
Origin and history
The Bosworth–Toller dictionary records the English nyd as “the name of the rune, ᚾ, N” and notes that the rune could stand for the word itself in a text.
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. 27; Norwegian poem 8; Icelandic poem 8
- níd (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 “níd”
Last reviewed September 26, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research