Ansuz

The rune’s Proto-Germanic name is usually reconstructed as *ansuz, “a god”, one of the gods of the main Germanic pantheon (the word behind Old Norse áss, plural æsir). No early inscription spells the name out, so it is a reconstruction. Most accept it, because the Old English name ōs and the Old Norse áss or óss both continue it, but the Gothic letter name for a is recorded as ahsa or aza, and the common name might instead have been *ahsam, “ear of wheat”. The rune stands for the sound a.

The word itself is old: the sixth-century historian Jordanes says the Goths called their leading men Ansis, “demigods”, and the element ansu- appears in the personal name Āsugīsalaz (“god-hostage”) on the Kragehul lance shaft from Funen in Denmark, found in a war-booty deposit of the third to fifth century. Ansuz is the fourth rune of the Elder Futhark, and it stands fourth on the Kylver Stone from Gotland (about 400), the oldest known complete row, where it is cut mirrored.

Its shape, an upright stave with two short branches sloping down to the right, is probably taken from a North Italic (Etruscan) form of the letter a.

In the Younger Futhark of the Viking Age the rune kept the name áss but, as the language changed, came to stand for a nasal a and later o; the plain a sound passed to the old j rune. In England the Anglo-Frisian vowel changes split it into three runes: ōs for o, æsc (“ash tree”) for æ and āc (“oak”) for a.

In 1908 the Austrian writer Guido von List published his “Armanen” row of 18 runes (after a 1906 article), built on the 16-rune Younger Futhark. Its fourth rune is Os, a mirrored form of the Younger Futhark áss, given the values a and o. List said the runes had been revealed to him in 1902 during a spell of blindness; the system is his own, not an old tradition.

List’s ideas fed the völkisch nationalist movement, and the SS under Heinrich Himmler used runic signs, loosely based on historical rows, on flags and uniforms until 1945. Ansuz has no well-known misuse of its own. After the war Karl Spiesberger reworked the Armanen system without its racist ideas. Heathen Heritage rejects any racist or extremist use of the runes.

Modern rune divination for a wide public grew from Ralph Blum’s The Book of Runes (first published 1982 or 1983, by different listings), sold with 24 rune stones and a blank one. Ansuz is among them, with meanings that are Blum’s own.