Eihwaz · Eihwaz
Heimdall's Aett · No. 13 · Sound EI / Ï
Form after Elmer H. Antonsen, Runes and Germanic Linguistics (2002). The asterisk marks a linguistic reconstruction — no recording of Proto-Germanic exists. The IPA follows Ringe's (2006) sound system; the audio is a synthesised approximation. Trust the IPA over the audio.
DisputedThe first vowel is unsettled: some sources give the diphthong *eihwaz, others the long monophthong *īhwaz. The conventional name spells the diphthong.
Yew tree, the world axis
A stave bent opposite ways at both ends — the yew, roots deep and crown high. Poisonous yet living millennia, the wood of bows, the tree that joins the world of the living to the world of the dead.
You stand between two things — the old ending, the new not yet begun. Uncomfortable, but the most charged place to be. This rune protects those willing to walk through uncertainty; what you fear usually shrinks once faced.
Eihwaz has no reversed form. With heavy runes it can mean fear keeping you stuck in the middle, avoidance of a necessary change, or exhaustion from standing too long in uncertainty.
This rune is symmetrical and has no traditional reversed form.
Walk through it, not around it.
A caveat first: the Icelandic stanza below is matched by NAME, not by letter-shape. The Younger Futhark rune ᛦ ýr descends in form from ᛉ Algiz, but took its name 'yew' from the obsolete Eihwaz.
Yew was the best bow-wood in northern Europe because its outer wood resists stretching and its inner wood resists compression. Every part of the tree is poisonous except the red aril, and yews can live for thousands of years. The Icelandic poem defines ýr simply as a drawn bow.
ÝrYew — bent bow and brittle iron and giant of the arrow.
Icelandic Rune Poem — oldest manuscript c. 1500 (AM 687 d 4°). Reproduced verbatim from Dickins (1915)