Lagu
The twenty-first futhorc rune, transliterated l. Its name means "water", and the Old English poem treats the sea as frightening rather than mystical.
At a glance
- Rune
- ᛚU+16DA
- Unicode name
- RUNIC LETTER LAUKAZ LAGU LOGR L
- Alphabet
- Anglo-Saxon Futhorc
- In use
- c. AD 400 – 1100 (Early medieval England and Frisia)
- Position
- 21, ætt 3
- Transliteration
- l
- Sound value
- /l/
- Name
- lagu: water, sea, lakeAttested
Names
How the rune is called in each tradition, and how securely each name is recorded.
| Form | Language | Meaning | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| lagu | Old English | water, sea, lake | Attested |
An asterisk marks a reconstructed form: a word linguists have worked backwards to, not one that appears in any surviving source.
Etymology
Continues *laguz. The English stanza is one of the poem’s most vivid: the sea seems endless to those who must venture out in an unsteady boat, and the sea-steed pays no heed to its bridle.
Sound value
A plain /l/, unchanged in shape across every runic alphabet.
Historical use
Common. Set the stanza against modern readings of this rune as intuition or the unconscious: the poem treats the sea as terrifying, not as insightful.
Rune-poem evidence
The medieval verse that records this rune's name. Original text plus our own translation.
Lagu byþ leodum langsum geþuht, gif hi sculun neþan on nacan tealtum and hi sæyþa swyþe bregaþ and se brimhengest bridles ne gymð.Water seems unending to people, if they must venture out in an unsteady boat, and the sea-waves terrify them badly, and the sea-steed pays no heed to its bridle.(our translation)
Attested in
Objects and monuments where this rune can actually be seen.
- Thames scramasaxRiver Thames, London · 10th century
Twenty-second in the inlaid row, which puts ing and dæg ahead of it where the rune poem does not. That is worth little as evidence: the position falls inside runes 20–24 of the seax, a five-rune stretch whose order matches no other source and is usually put down to the carver rather than to an English tradition.
Signatures follow the Scandinavian Runic-text Database so you can look each inscription up directly. Each name links to the object's own entry.
Modern meaning
Why this entry has none.
None is given here. Modern rune divination is built almost entirely on the Elder Futhark, and no established modern tradition reads the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc separately. Inventing a reading for Lagu to fill the space would be exactly the kind of fabrication this site exists to flag, so the field is left empty rather than filled. Its Elder Futhark ancestor is linked further down and does carry a modern reading, labelled as modern. How modern rune meanings were arrived at is a separate discussion.
The same rune in other alphabets
Runes descended from the same original character, so you can follow it through time.
The rest of ætt 3
Sources for this entry
Full references are on the sources page. If you think something here is wrong, our corrections policy explains how to say so.