Tiwaz

The rune is named after the god known in Old Norse as Týr. Its Proto-Germanic name is reconstructed as *Tīwaz (also written *Teiwaz); no early source records the name in that form. The word is usually traced back to an older Indo-European word for a god or “heavenly one”, from the same root as Latin deus. Bruce Dickins, writing in 1915, had no doubt that the letter’s original name was Ti or Tiw. The Gothic letter names give it as tyz, and the Germanic peoples used the god’s name to translate the Roman “day of Mars”, which is where English “Tuesday” comes from.

The rune is an upward arrow (ᛏ) and stands for the sound t. It is the seventeenth rune of the Elder Futhark and the first of the third ætt. It also turns up in ways that look deliberate rather than plain spelling. The Lindholm amulet, a bone piece found in a Swedish bog in 1840 and dated anywhere from the 2nd to the 6th century, has three t-runes in a row, which some read as a call on the god; this is a suggestion, not a proven reading. The Kylver Stone from Gotland, about 400 AD, follows its complete row of runes with a fir-tree sign that may be several t-runes stacked on one stem. A gold bracteate from Zealand (Seeland-II-C, about 500 AD) ends its inscription with three stacked t-runes.

The rune kept its shape and its name in the later rows. In the Younger Futhark it is the twelfth rune, týr, and stands for both t and d. In Anglo-Saxon manuscripts of the futhorc it is called ti in two 9th-century copies and tir or tyr in later ones.

The Poetic Edda poem Sigrdrífumál tells the hero to carve victory runes on his sword and to name Týr twice. Some modern writers link this to the t-rune, but the runologists MacLeod and Mees read it mainly as a plain prayer to the god, with “twice” chosen to alliterate.

The Austrian occultist Guido von List published Das Geheimnis der Runen in 1906 (as a book in 1908), setting out an invented row of 18 “Armanen” runes in which Tyr is number 12, drawn in its Younger Futhark form. Under the Nazis the rune became an emblem of several organisations: the ADL names the leadership schools (Reichsführerschulen) of the SA and a Waffen-SS infantry division, which other sources identify as the 32nd SS Volunteer Grenadier Division “30 Januar”. Since 1945 neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups have kept using it, partly because of its reputation as a “warrior rune”; the ADL counts it, with the Life rune, among the most common racist uses of runes. Examples include the emblem of the Thule Seminar, a former logo of the clothing brand Thor Steinar, and the flag of the Nordic Resistance Movement.

Many heathens and other neopagans use the rune simply to honour Týr, and the ADL advises judging each use by its context. Heathen Heritage rejects any use of this rune as a symbol of racism or hate.