Dagaz Rune Meaning — Day, Light & the ᛞ Rune Explained

Dagaz (ᛞ) is the twenty-fourth and final rune of the Elder Futhark and it means "day" — daylight, dawn, and the breaking of light after darkness. It carries the sound d and belongs to the Elder Futhark and survived into the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc as Dæg, but it was dropped when the Younger Futhark reduced the row from 24 runes to 16 in the Viking Age.

ᛞ

What does Dagaz mean?

The name comes directly from the Proto-Germanic word for "day," the ancestor of the modern English word itself. Its rune shape — two triangles meeting at a point, or an hourglass lying on its side — visually suggests a turning point between darkness and light, and it is often connected to the sensation of dawn breaking or to the turning of the seasons rather than to a single calendar day.

Dagaz closes the Elder Futhark row at twenty-four runes, and its position at the very end, paired with the meaning "day," has long invited comment — the row seems to end on light rather than darkness. That reading is plausible, but it should be treated as a later interpretation layered onto a genuinely old rune, not as a fact the Viking-Age carvers wrote down anywhere.

Dagaz in the Old English rune poem

Dæg byþ drihtnes sond, deore mannum, mære metodes leoht, myrgþ and tohiht eadgum and earmum, eallum brice.

"Day is the Lord's messenger, dear to men, the Maker's glorious light — joy and hope to rich and poor, of worth to all." — Old English Rune Poem, c. 8th–9th century

Only the Old English poem survives for this rune, because the Norwegian and Icelandic rune poems cover just the sixteen runes of the Younger Futhark, and Dagaz had already left that row by the Viking Age. The surviving verse is Christianized in its language — "the Lord's messenger," "the Maker's glorious light" — reflecting the Christian England in which the poem was written down, but the underlying idea, that daylight brings hope and worth to everyone regardless of station, sits comfortably with the older, pre-Christian sense of Dagaz as a rune of light overcoming dark.

How to write Dagaz

Dagaz stands for the sound d. Any name or word containing a D can be transliterated with ᛞ — try it in our free rune translator, which writes your name in the Elder, Younger or Anglo-Saxon rows and lets you download it as a poster. The full texts of all three rune poems, with our translations, are on the same page.

Dagaz, light and breakthrough

As the rune of daylight and the turning point between dark and light, Dagaz is often read today as a symbol of hope, clarity and breakthrough — a modern, symbolic reading rather than an attested Viking-Age divination meaning, since there is no surviving Viking-Age evidence that runes were used for fortune-telling in the way modern rune-casting describes. You can read every rune in order in our Elder Futhark rune meanings guide, and runic inscriptions appear across our Viking jewelry collection.

Dagaz FAQ

What does the Dagaz rune mean?

Dagaz (ᛞ) is the twenty-fourth and last rune of the Elder Futhark and means "day" — daylight, dawn, and the breaking of light after darkness.

Why is there only one rune poem for Dagaz?

The Norwegian and Icelandic rune poems only cover the sixteen runes of the Younger Futhark, which had dropped several Elder Futhark runes, including Dagaz, by the Viking Age. Only the Old English rune poem, which describes the full older row, includes a verse for Dæg.

Is Dagaz the last rune of the Elder Futhark?

Yes. Dagaz is the twenty-fourth and final rune in the standard ordering of the Elder Futhark row, following Othala.