Raidho

The rune’s Proto-Germanic name is reconstructed as *raidō, usually taken to mean “riding” or “a ride”, and by extension a journey or a wagon. No early inscription spells the name out, so it is a reconstruction, but the later names agree well: Old Norwegian ræið and Old Icelandic reið, “riding”, and the Old English rune name rād (written rada). A manuscript in Vienna (Codex Vindobonensis 795) that gives that English name also records the Gothic letter r as reda; a Gothic form ráida, “wagon”, has been reconstructed from it. The rune stands for the sound r.

Raidō is the fifth rune of the Elder Futhark, the r of the word “futhark”, and it appears in the very oldest finds. The comb from the Vimose bog on Funen, Denmark, dated to about 160 and often called the oldest datable runic inscription, reads harja, with an r in the middle. A spearhead from a grave at Øvre Stabu in Norway, probably of the late second or early third century (its dating is not secure), reads raunijaz, most likely the spear’s own name, “tester”. On the complete row cut on the Kylver Stone from Gotland, of about 400, it stands fifth, after f u þ a.

The shape, an upright stave with a loop at the top and a leg running down to the right, looks much like a Latin R, and it may have been taken from it, though where the runes came from is still debated.

The rune kept its shape, sound and place in the later rows: it is reið in the 16-rune Younger Futhark (the same form in the long-branch and short-twig sets) and rād, “riding”, in the Anglo-Saxon futhorc. It should not be confused with the Younger Futhark ʀ rune, ýr, a different sign that comes from the old z rune.

Guido von List’s “Armanen” row of 18 runes, published as an article in 1906 and as the book Das Geheimnis der Runen in 1908, includes this rune as its fifth sign under the name Rit, matching the Younger Futhark reið. List said the runes had come to him in 1902 while he was temporarily blind after eye surgery; the system is his own creation, not an old tradition. Siegfried Adolf Kummer used the Armanen runes in magical writings of the early 1930s, and after the war Karl Spiesberger reworked the system and removed its racist elements.

List’s runes were taken up by the völkisch nationalist movement, and the SS used runic signs, loosely based on historical rows, on flags, uniforms and other items until 1945. No specific SS use of this rune is recorded in the sources we checked. Heathen Heritage rejects any racist or extremist use of the runes.

Modern rune divination for a general public grew from Ralph Blum’s The Book of Runes (first published 1982 or 1983, depending on the listing), sold with 24 rune stones and a blank one. Raido is among them, with meanings that are Blum’s own.