Tiwaz
The Elder Futhark rune for the “t” sound, shaped like an arrow pointing up. It is named for the god Týr.
Meaning
The reconstructed name is *tīwaR, Old Norse Týr, “Tyr (Norse war god)”, according to Store norske leksikon. The Norwegian rune poem calls Týr “a one-handed god”, and the Icelandic poem “god with one hand and leavings of the wolf and prince of temples”: in Norse myth the wolf Fenrir bit off his hand. The Old English poem uses the name tir and describes a guiding star that “is ever on its course over the mists of night and never fails”.
Origin and history
The god’s name is in the English week. The National Museum of Denmark notes that “Tuesday means Týr’s day”, and Bruce Dickins that most Germanic peoples used the name to translate Mars in the name of the third day of the week. The museum also shows Týr on Iron Age gold bracteates, with his hand in the wolf’s mouth. In the Poetic Edda the valkyrie Sigrdrífa teaches “winning-runes” to be written on a sword-hilt, “and twice shalt thou call on Tyr”.
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.Read next
- Next in Elder Futhark runesBerkananThe Elder Futhark rune for the “b” sound. Its name, *berkanan, meant the birch tree.
- The same shape in Hobo symbolsHobo monikerA hobo’s road name, written with the date and an arrow for the direction of travel on water tanks, bridges and stations. Unlike the chalk signs, these marks survive in numbers.
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. 48 and note; Norwegian poem 12; Icelandic poem 12
- Tíw (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 “Tíw”
- The old religion, National Museum of Denmark
- The Poetic Edda (Bellows translation), Henry Adams Bellows (trans.), 1923, American-Scandinavian Foundation (Project Gutenberg), Sigrdrifumol, stanza 6
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from arrows or letters and numbers.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed September 30, 2026. How we research
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