ᛒᛁᚱᚦ · ᚱᚢᚾᛖ
Birth Rune Calculator
Enter your birth date and find the Elder Futhark rune that governs it.
ᚠ · ᚱᚢᚾᛖ · ᚲᛁᚱᚲᛚᛖ
Your rune is just the beginning
Enter the Rune Circle for birth-rune insights, rune guides, and the hidden meanings behind Norse symbols.
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Make It Personal
What Is a Birth Rune?
A birth rune is the Elder Futhark rune assigned to the half-month in which you were born. The year is divided into twenty-four periods of roughly fifteen days, one for each rune of the Elder Futhark, running in the traditional order from Fehu at the height of summer through to Dagaz at midsummer's edge. Your birth date falls inside one of those half-months, and that rune — its name, its literal meaning and its old associations — is read as the sign that governs it.
Is This Actually Viking?
Partly. The Elder Futhark itself is genuinely ancient, in use across Northern Europe from roughly the second to the eighth century, and the rune names and meanings come from real historical sources. The birth-rune mapping does not. It is a modern reconstruction, worked out in the twentieth century from medieval runic almanacs such as the Norwegian primstav. No Viking-age source assigns runes to birth dates. We would rather say that plainly than sell you a myth.
Viking Birth Month Symbols
People usually search for Viking birth month symbols expecting one rune per calendar month, but the system does not work that way. Twenty-four half-months do not divide evenly into twelve calendar months, so nearly every rune straddles two of them — Fehu runs from late June into mid-July, Tiwaz from late February into mid-March. That is why your birth rune rarely lines up with the month on your birth certificate, and why the day matters as much as the month.
Next: make your own bind rune or write your name in runes.
See all twenty-four half-months
- ᚠ Fehu — 29 June – 13 July — Cattle, wealth
- ᚢ Uruz — 14 July – 28 July — Aurochs, wild strength
- ᚦ Thurisaz — 29 July – 12 August — Thorn, giant
- ᚨ Ansuz — 13 August – 28 August — Odin, breath, speech
- ᚱ Raidho — 29 August – 12 September — Riding, the journey
- ᚲ Kenaz — 13 September – 27 September — Torch, controlled fire
- ᚷ Gebo — 28 September – 12 October — Gift
- ᚹ Wunjo — 13 October – 27 October — Joy
- ᚺ Hagalaz — 28 October – 12 November — Hail
- ᚾ Nauthiz — 13 November – 27 November — Need, necessity
- ᛁ Isa — 28 November – 12 December — Ice
- ᛃ Jera — 13 December – 27 December — Year, harvest
- ᛇ Eihwaz — 28 December – 12 January — Yew, the world tree
- ᛈ Perthro — 13 January – 27 January — Lot cup, chance
- ᛉ Algiz — 28 January – 11 February — Elk, protection
- ᛊ Sowilo — 12 February – 26 February — Sun
- ᛏ Tiwaz — 27 February – 13 March — Tyr, the sky god
- ᛒ Berkano — 14 March – 29 March — Birch, the mother
- ᛖ Ehwaz — 30 March – 13 April — Horse
- ᛗ Mannaz — 14 April – 28 April — Humankind, the self
- ᛚ Laguz — 29 April – 13 May — Water, lake
- ᛜ Ingwaz — 14 May – 28 May — Ing (Freyr), the seed
- ᛟ Othala — 29 May – 13 June — Ancestral land, inheritance
- ᛞ Dagaz — 14 June – 28 June — Day, dawn