Beyond Wards and Fortune: The Many Uses of Runes in Heathen History

When most people think of runes today, two images usually come to mind: carving wards for protection, or casting runes to glimpse the future. While both of these uses have roots in historical sources, the story of the runes is far deeper and more complex. In the Viking Age and earlier, runes were not just a magical alphabet;  they were a living script used for memory, identity, and power. To understand how they were used in the past, we have to turn to archaeology, sagas, and Eddic poetry.

What emerges is a picture of the runes as tools for far more than magic, and of heathen spellwork as much broader than runes alone.

What People Actually Used Runes For (Historical & Attested)

Everyday Writing and Identity
It’s worth remembering that most runic inscriptions are not magical at all. Archaeologists find them on memorial stones, tools, jewelry, and everyday objects. They marked ownership, commemorated the dead, or recorded short messages. This tells us that runes were part of everyday literacy and identity, not only ritual tools.

Healing and Charms
That said, runes were often used in healing charms. The Canterbury Charm (11th century) is a clear example of runes used against disease, and Anglo-Saxon medical texts (Lacnunga) often blend herbal remedies with incantations. Saga literature also preserves episodes where runes are used to heal or harm.

Protection and Amulets
Runes carved onto drinking horns, weapons, or small amulets were believed to protect their bearers. In Egils saga, Egill Skallagrímsson famously uses runes to detect poison in a horn of ale, saving his life. Archaeological finds — such as bracteates inscribed with short formulas like alu — are often interpreted as protective or magical charms.

Victory, Battle, and Love
The Sigrdrífumál (part of the Poetic Edda) contains advice on carving “victory-runes” into sword hilts for success in battle, and “ale-runes” for other outcomes. Other stories describe runes being used in love-magic or curses, with skilled rune-workers carving or erasing inscriptions to alter outcomes. These examples highlight the dual nature of rune-magic: it could bless or bind, heal or harm.

Ritual and Symbolic Uses
Runes were sometimes used not as words, but as symbols that carried entire concepts. A single rune could stand for victory, justice, or protection. When inscribed on ritual objects or sacred places, runes acted as condensed carriers of meaning — much like a sigil or emblem.

Divination and Hidden Knowledge
Of course, divination was also part of rune-lore. The Hávamál preserves the myth of Odin’s self-sacrifice to gain the runes, portraying them as keys to hidden wisdom. Casting or interpreting runes as a way of accessing the unknown is a practice with deep mythic roots, even if our exact methods today are modern reconstructions.

Was All Heathen Spellwork Runic?

The short answer is no. While rune-magic was powerful and respected, it was not the only method. Heathen spellwork also included:

• Seiðr — ecstatic, trance-based practices often connected with prophecy and fate-weaving.
• Galdr — spoken or sung incantations, sometimes accompanied by ritual action.
• Material magic — herbs, knots, carved poles, and other physical implements.

The runes were part of a much wider web of magical practice, not the whole of it.

What The Sagas Say

The Icelandic sagas preserve some of the richest accounts of rune-use, blending narrative with cultural memory:

• Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar (c. 13th century): Egill carves runes to expose poison in a drinking horn and to heal a sick woman by erasing harmful runes carved incorrectly (ch. 72–74). These episodes reveal both the dangers and benefits of rune-magic.
• Sigrdrífumál (Poetic Edda): the valkyrie Sigrdrífa teaches Sigurðr about various rune types — victory-runes, ale-runes, birth-runes, and more — showing how runes were tied to multiple domains of life.
• Hávamál (Poetic Edda): Odin’s self-sacrifice on the World Tree grants him knowledge of the runes, which he then describes as tools for healing, protection, binding, and revelation (stanzas 138–165).

These texts are not instruction manuals, but they do reveal how rune-power was imagined: potent, versatile, and dangerous in the wrong hands.

What Archaeology Shows

Material evidence helps balance the saga accounts by showing how runes were used in daily life:

• Runestones: thousands of Viking Age memorial stones, most of which serve as records of lineage and remembrance rather than magical inscriptions.
• Bracteates: small gold pendants from the Migration Period often inscribed with the formula alu, generally interpreted as a protective or magical word (MacLeod & Mees 2006).
• Everyday inscriptions: short rune-marks on combs, bone pieces, or tools, often simply ownership marks (“X owns me”), but sometimes carrying charm-like phrases.
• The Canterbury Charm (11th century): a runic healing charm written in the margin of a manuscript, showing that runes could serve as ritual text in Christian England as well.

The archaeological record reminds us that while runes could be magical, they were also an everyday alphabet used in many non-magical contexts.

Runes are powerful, but they were never the sole language of magic. They served as an alphabet of daily life, tools of remembrance, and carriers of sacred power. If we look only at runes as fortune-telling symbols, we miss the richness of their place in the old northern world. To understand heathen magic, we must see runes as one thread woven into a larger tapestry... one that also includes song, trance, herbs, ritual, and the human imagination.

Sources:

• Poetic Edda: Hávamál (Rúnatal) and Sigrdrífumál on runes and magic.
• Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar: stories of runes carved to heal and protect.
• Canterbury Charm: an 11th-century healing charm with runes.
• Archaeology: bracteates inscribed with alu and other formulas.
• Scholarly works: Raymond I. Page’s An Introduction to English Runes, Neil Price’s The Viking Way, and Mindy MacLeod & Bernard Mees’ Runic Amulets and Magic Objects.