Othala
The Elder Futhark rune for the “o” sound. Its name meant inherited land, the family estate.
Meaning
Store norske leksikon gives the reconstructed name *ōþila, Old Norse óðal, “odel, property”. The Old English poem, where the name is ethel, describes the estate: it “is very dear to every man, if he can enjoy there in his house whatever is right and proper in constant prosperity”.
Origin and history
Bruce Dickins notes that the English ethel was originally the name of the o letter, and that the rune could stand for the word ethel, homeland, in manuscripts such as Beowulf. The Bosworth–Toller dictionary glosses the English name as “one’s native country”. The drawing follows the plain form of the early inscriptions.
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. 71 and note
- éþel (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 “éþel”
Last reviewed September 26, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research