Laguz

  • Alphabet Elder Futhark
  • Group Tyr's Ætt
  • Sound l
Historical evidence

The name and the earliest evidence

No early source records what the first rune users called this rune. Scholars reconstruct its Proto-Germanic name in two ways: *laguz, “water, lake”, or *laukaz, “leek”. The water name rests on the later rune poems: Old English lagu (“sea”) and Old Norse lǫgr (“water”). A Gothic letter name, written laaz in a manuscript of Alcuin’s works now in Vienna (Codex Vindobonensis 795), is usually explained as *lagus. The leek name rests instead on early inscriptions and on some tenth-century manuscripts that call the rune laukr. Both remain proposals; neither is certain.

The rune stands for the sound l and has the same shape as the l of the Raetic alphabet of the Alps. On the Kylver Stone from Gotland, about 400 AD, the oldest known complete row of the 24 runes, it is the twenty-first rune, after m and before the ng, d and o runes.

The word laukaz is common on gold bracteates, pendants of about 400 to 600 AD found mostly in Denmark; the Skrydstrup bracteate, for example, repeats laukaz alu twice. A bone scraping knife from a woman’s grave at Fløksand in Hordaland, Norway, about 350 AD, appears to name linen and leek together, and a knife from nearby Gjersvik, about 450 AD, carries ten l runes. Whether a single l rune stood for “leek” on such objects is uncertain; it could also shorten the word alu.

The shape (ᛚ) hardly changed. The Younger Futhark kept it as lǫgr, fifteenth of its sixteen runes, and the Anglo-Saxon futhorc kept it as lagu.

Myth and literature · Quotation

The rune poems

Old English Rune Poem

ᛚ (the ocean) seems interminable to men, if they venture on the rolling bark and the waves of the sea terrify them and the courser of the deep heed not its bridle.

Old Norwegian Rune Rhyme

A waterfall is a River which falls from a mountain-side;
but ornaments are of gold.

Old Icelandic Rune Poem

Water = eddying stream
and broad geysir
and land of the fish.

Myth and literature

What the rune poems say

All three poems tie the rune to water, but each looks at it differently. The Old English verse sees the open sea from a sailor’s point of view: the ocean seems to go on without end, the waves frighten those who sail on it, and the ship, pictured as a horse of the deep, will not answer to its bridle. It is a picture of danger and of being at the mercy of something larger.

The Norwegian verse names a waterfall coming down a mountainside, then adds a half-line about gold ornaments. In that poem the second line of each verse is usually tied to the first by rhyme rather than by sense, so it should not be read as a hidden meaning.

The Icelandic poem gives three short names for water, in its usual riddle style: a churning stream, a wide geysir (a gushing spring), and the land where fish live. Here water is part of the landscape rather than a threat.

Historical evidence

Later history

In 1906, in a periodical, and in 1908 as a book, the Austrian occultist Guido von List published a row of eighteen “Armanen” runes that he said came to him after an eye operation in 1902. His row was built on the Younger Futhark, and its fourteenth rune, Laf, is this rune, taken over from the Younger Futhark lǫgr. List’s runes are a modern invention, not an old tradition.

List’s ideas belonged to the nationalist movement in Germany and Austria, and his runes later became part of Nazi symbolism; the SS used runic signs on flags, uniforms and other items from the 1920s to 1945. The sources used here record no specific misuse of this rune’s shape. The site rejects every use of the runes to promote racial or nationalist hatred.

Modern interpretation

Name and sources

Sound and image: L: Water, or a leak.

Upright: Flow, water, sea, a fertility source, the healing power of renewal. Life energy and organic growth. Imagination and psychic matters. Dreams, fantasies, mysteries, the unknown, the hidden, the deep, the underworld. Success in travel or acquisition, but with the possibility of loss.

Reversed or merkstave: An indication of a period of confusion in your life. You may be making wrong decisions and poor judgements. Lack of creativity and feelings of being in a rut. Fear, circular motion, avoidance, withering. Madness, obsession, despair, perversity, sickness, suicide.

Modern interpretation

As read on this site

This is the divinatory meaning used for readings here. Rune divination as practised today is a modern practice; it is not a documented ancient Norse one.

Upright

  • intuition
  • emotional flow
  • unconscious wisdom
  • trusting deep currents

Laguz is water — intuition, the unconscious, the flow of life that moves according to its own deep logic. This rune represents trusting what you sense beneath the surface of conscious reasoning. When Laguz stands upright, your intuition is reliable, and the currents you're moving with are taking you somewhere genuinely good.

Upright in particular areas
In general
Your intuitive sense of this situation is more trustworthy than an overly analytical read would be. Follow the current.
In love
A relationship guided well by genuine feeling and instinct rather than overthinking.
In work
A decision best made by trusting your gut read on the situation rather than forcing pure logic onto it.

Reversed

  • emotional confusion
  • misleading instinct
  • passive drifting
  • unclear undercurrents

Laguz reversed is intuition gone astray — emotional confusion, or unconscious currents pulling you somewhere unhelpful. This rune warns against confusing anxiety for insight, and against drifting passively when the current is actually working against you.

Reversed in particular areas
In general
What feels like intuition may actually be anxiety or wishful thinking. Check your read against more solid ground.
In love
Emotional confusion clouding clear judgment about what's actually happening in a relationship.
In work
A gut feeling that's leading in an unhelpful direction. Verify before following it further.

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