Rune Casting: Elder Futhark Rune Draw

Draw from the 24 runes of the Elder Futhark, the oldest runic alphabet. Each result shows the rune’s letter sound and original name as well as the modern reading.

For entertainment and self-reflection: Runes were first and foremost an alphabet; modern rune casting is a twentieth-century practice, and the readings here are modern themes in our own words. Nothing on this page is a prediction, and it is not financial, medical, psychological or legal advice. Use it as a prompt for thought, not as a basis for decisions.

How the draw works

The calculator holds the 24 runes of the Elder Futhark, the alphabet named after its first six letters (F, U, Th, A, R, K). When you draw, your browser shuffles all 24 with a Fisher–Yates shuffle driven by its cryptographic random number generator and takes one or three from the top, so no rune can come up twice in the same spread. If reversals are allowed, each rune also has an even chance of landing upside down, which rune readers call merkstave ("dark stave").

Nine of the runes look exactly the same when turned upside down: Gebo, Hagalaz, Naudhiz, Isa, Jera, Eihwaz, Sowilo, Ingwaz and Dagaz. They cannot be reversed, so they are always read upright. That makes the odds simple: each rune has a 1 in 24 chance of being drawn as a single rune, and for the fifteen reversible runes, upright and reversed are equally likely.

A single rune is a quick theme for the day or a question. The three-rune spread is a modern favourite, read left to right as the situation, the challenge or action, and the likely outcome. Some readers name the three positions after the Norns of Norse myth, Urðr, Verðandi and Skuld, who are associated with what was, what is coming into being and what shall be.

The 24 runes of the Elder Futhark

The names below are the reconstructed Proto-Germanic forms that scholars use. No one in the runic period wrote down the full set of names; they are worked out from later rune poems and related words in Gothic, Old English and Old Norse.

Worked example

Suppose a three-rune spread for "How should I approach the new project?" gives Raidho, Isa and Jera. Raidho, "riding", sits in the first position: there is momentum and a journey under way. Isa, "ice", in the middle suggests a pause or a freeze, perhaps a wait for approval or a slow patch. Jera, "year" or "harvest", as the outcome is the rune of results that come in their proper season. A reader might sum it up as: "you have started well; expect a pause; patient work will pay off at the right time." Isa and Jera both look the same either way up, so neither can be reversed.

The real history of runes

Runes are letters. The Elder Futhark was used by Germanic-speaking peoples from around the second century CE until roughly the eighth century, carved on objects such as brooches, weapons, combs and memorial stones. Most scholars think it was adapted from a Mediterranean alphabet, most likely an Old Italic one or the Latin alphabet. Around 400 CE the complete row of 24 was carved in order on the Kylver Stone in Gotland, Sweden, the oldest known complete listing. Later the alphabet changed: in Scandinavia it was simplified to the 16-rune Younger Futhark of the Viking Age, while in England it was expanded into the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc.

Did people use runes for divination? The evidence is thin. The Roman historian Tacitus, writing in 98 CE in his Germania, described Germanic peoples casting lots by cutting a branch into slips, marking them with signs and scattering them on a white cloth. He does not say the marks were runes, and some runic inscriptions are clearly magical charms or formulae, but there is no surviving description of rune casting as practised today.

The meanings we use come from two sources. The medieval rune poems, written in Old English, Old Norwegian and Old Icelandic, give a short verse for each rune, describing cattle, ice, the sun and so on. And the modern revival: German occultists in the early twentieth century built new systems around runes, and in 1982 Ralph Blum’s The Book of Runes, sold with a set of rune tiles, created the popular style of casting that most rune sets still follow. Blum added a blank rune, which has no historical basis; we leave it out.

Runes have also been misused. Some runic symbols were taken up by Nazi Germany and are still used by hate groups. We present the runes as the historic alphabet and as a modern reflective practice, and their misuse has nothing to do with either.

Using runes for reflection

• Learn the alphabet. Writing your name in runes using the sound column is a fun way to remember them, and it is how they were actually used.
• Use the image, not just the keyword. Ice, a torch, a birch tree, a horse: the original names are vivid pictures that often suggest more than the modern reading.
• Keep a note. Record the date, your question and the runes. Looking back is often more useful than the draw itself.
• Keep decisions grounded. Use the prompt to think, then decide on the facts.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

• Page, R. I. Runes (Reading the Past), British Museum Press, 1987.
• Spurkland, T. Norwegian Runes and Runic Inscriptions, Boydell, 2005.
• Tacitus, Germania ch. 10 (98 CE), trans. in the Loeb Classical Library.
• Dickins, B. Runic and Heroic Poems of the Old Teutonic Peoples, Cambridge, 1915 (public domain; the rune poems).
• Blum, R. The Book of Runes, Oracle Books, 1982.
• Wikipedia: "Elder Futhark" and "Kylver Stone".

By Stanley King · About 8calc · Last reviewed October 2026

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