Sowilo (ᛊ) is the sixteenth rune of the Elder Futhark and stands for the sound s. Its name means "sun." The three medieval rune poems praise the sun as a hope for sailors, the light of the world and the destroyer of ice. In modern rune reading Sowilo is taken to mean success, energy and clarity, and it is read as a yes.
What does the Sowilo rune mean?
Sowilo was the s of the oldest runic alphabet, one of its most frequent letters. Its name, like those of its neighbors hail and ice, comes from the sky and the weather.
In modern rune reading, which dates from the 20th century, that name is read as a symbol:
- Success. Effort that comes to something, in plain view.
- Energy. Warmth and vitality after a cold stretch.
- Clarity. Daylight on a matter that was hard to see.
The Sowilo sign and its sound
Sowilo is a zigzag: three or four short strokes joined at angles, like a letter S made with straight lines. It is one of the few runes with no upright stave. In later alphabets the zigzag was simplified.
It stands for s. The reconstructed name is written Sowilo or Sowelu. The Old English name is Sigel and the Old Norse name Sól.
The name Sowilo and what the rune poems say
Tineke Looijenga, in her survey of the oldest inscriptions, gives the reconstructed name as sōwilō and translates the Old English form sigel as "sun." The s rune was kept in every later runic alphabet, so all three medieval rune poems describe it. The lines here are from Bruce Dickins's 1915 translation.
The Old English poet thinks of ships: "The sun is ever a joy in the hopes of seafarers when they journey away over the fishes' bath, until the courser of the deep bears them to land." The "fishes' bath" is the sea and the "courser of the deep" is the ship. For a sailor without a compass, a visible sun was direction and reassurance.
The Old Norwegian poem is the briefest: "Sun is the light of the world; I bow to the divine decree."
The Old Icelandic poem stacks up three images: "Shield of the clouds and shining ray and destroyer of ice." The last one answers an earlier verse of the same poem, where ice is the roof of the wave. In this alphabet the sun undoes the ice rune.
Guidance, light, the end of winter: the poems are warm about the sun but practical. The modern meanings of victory and personal power are larger claims than the verses make.
Sowilo in a modern rune reading
The readings below belong to modern practice; they are not ancient lore.
As a rune of the day, Sowilo is taken as encouragement to step into the light and let people see your work.
In a three-rune cast:
- The situation. Things are clearer and warmer than they were. There is energy to use.
- The challenge. Staying in the shade out of habit or modesty. The task is to be seen as you are.
- The likely outcome. The matter comes into the open and tends to go well there. It is a direction, not a verdict.
In a yes-or-no question Sowilo is read as a yes.
Draw a rune of the day or cast three below.
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How the symbol was misused
A doubled and stylized form of this rune served as the insignia of the SS in Nazi Germany. That doubled sign is included in the Anti-Defamation League's database of hate symbols, which traces it to the sowilo, or sun, rune. The single rune is far older and has a much wider history as an ordinary letter s. Here it is shown only in that historical sense, once and in a neutral form.
Sowilo upright and its place in the alphabet
Sowilo's zigzag reads the same when turned around, so it has no reversed form even in books that use reversals. Our rune reading reads all runes upright.
Sowilo is the eighth and last rune of the second ætt. That middle group opens with hail and passes through need and ice; it ends here with the sun. Before Sowilo stands Algiz, and after it Tiwaz begins the final group. The whole row is in the guide to the Elder Futhark runes.