Raido
The Elder Futhark rune for the “r” sound. Its name, *raidu, meant riding or a journey on horseback.
Meaning
Store norske leksikon gives the reconstructed name *raidu, Old Norse reið, “riding, a journey on horseback, a wagon”. The Icelandic rune poem calls riding the “joy of the horseman and speedy journey and toil of the steed”; the Norwegian poem says riding “is said to be the worst thing for horses”. The Old English poem makes a joke of it: riding seems easy to a warrior “while he is indoors”, and takes courage on the high roads “on the back of a stout horse”.
Origin and history
The English name was rad, which the Bosworth–Toller dictionary lists as “the name of the Runic R”. Bruce Dickins records a second reading suggested to him by Professor Chadwick: that the proper name of the letter is rada, related to Old Norse reiði, tackle or harness, which would give the English stanza a double meaning of furniture indoors and harness on the road.
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, Kaunan, 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. 13 and note; Norwegian poem 5; Icelandic poem 5
- rád (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 “rád”
Last reviewed September 26, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research