Eihwaz

“Eihwaz” is a modern name, not one found in any old source. Scholars reconstruct two related Proto-Germanic words for “yew”, *īhaz and *īwaz (the second perhaps an early borrowing from Celtic), and the usual spelling mixes the two. The only old name is the Old English eoh (also īh), “yew”. Bruce Dickins suggested in 1915 that the original form may have been *ihwiz.

Its sound is one of the least certain in the whole row. It is written ï (sometimes æ) by a convention that follows Wolfgang Krause, and scholars have proposed a lost long vowel, a sound like German ch in ich, or a joining of i and j. All that seems agreed is that it marked a front vowel. Dickins wrote that its value in the old alphabet was “quite unknown”.

The rune is not found in the earliest inscriptions, from about 175 to 400 AD. It first shows up in the rune rows: on the Kylver Stone from Gotland, about 400 AD, the oldest known full row, and on the sixth-century Vadstena bracteate. It stands next to p, and the two may change places between these rows, though published readings of the order differ. Its shape is a vertical stave with a hook at the top to one side and at the bottom to the other (ᛇ).

The sixteen-rune Younger Futhark dropped it, but its name “yew” passed to another rune, ýr, whose shape comes from the old z-rune. In England the rune lived on as eoh, used for an i sound on the Dover stone (Gislheard) and for an h sound on the Ruthwell Cross (almeïttig). Its name later passed to yogh, the Middle English letter ȝ.

We found no early modern rune scholar or nineteenth-century occult writer who gave this rune a special place. Guido von List’s eighteen “Armanen” runes (book edition 1908) include no rune of this name.

Its outline does resemble the Wolfsangel (“wolf hook”), a Z-shaped sign known from medieval heraldry and said to come from a hook used to trap wolves. The Wolfsangel has no match in any old runic row, though it is often called runic and is sometimes confused with List’s invented “gibor” rune. The Nazis adopted it, for example in the insignia of the Waffen-SS division “Das Reich”, and neo-Nazi groups such as Aryan Nations use it today. The Anti-Defamation League lists it as a hate symbol, and its display by neo-Nazi groups is illegal in Germany. The rune ᛇ itself is a different and much older sign.

In modern rune divination, Ralph Blum’s widely sold Book of Runes (St. Martin’s Press, first edition dated 1982 or 1983 by different sources) includes Eihwaz in its set with a meaning of its own, which has no old source.

Heathen Heritage rejects the Nazi and neo-Nazi use of the Wolfsangel and of runic signs.