Dagaz

The Elder Futhark rune ᛞ is usually given the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name *dagaz, “day”. The name is reconstructed, not recorded: the only rune-name tradition that preserves it is Anglo-Saxon, where the rune is called dæg. The Gothic letter for d is called dags, which points the same way. Its sound value is d, and Wikipedia’s table also lists [ð] as a possible value.

It stands near the end of the row, in position 23 or 24 depending on the order used. The Kylver Stone from Gotland, dated by its grave context to about 400 AD, carries the full row, with d and o as the last two runes. The Charnay fibula from Burgundy (mid-6th century) is cut off after the first twenty runes, and the last four, including d, appear to have been left out for lack of space.

The shape, often called a “butterfly” or double triangle meeting at the points, is of uncertain origin. It may derive from the Lepontic letter san, from the Rhaetic alphabet’s D, or be a native invention.

The rune was lost in the Younger Futhark, which has no equivalent for it. It survived in the Anglo-Frisian and later Anglo-Saxon futhorc. On the Ingelstad stone (Ög 43) a dagaz rune is read as the first letter of the personal name Dagr.

The rune had dropped out of use in Scandinavia with the Younger Futhark, so the early modern and later systems that built on the Scandinavian runes could not take it over directly.

Guido von List invented the Armanen rune row in 1902 and published it in 1906 and 1908. Its first sixteen runes follow the Younger Futhark, with some changed names and shapes, so it is not a direct continuation of the Elder Futhark dagaz.

The Armanen runes were taken up by the völkisch movement and later by Nazi organisations. Heinrich Himmler is described as having systematised runic signs across the SS, whose members received runic training until 1939. This site rejects any use of the runes to support racism or Nazi ideas.