Armanen Runes
Bar
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Origin 1902 to 1908
Thirteenth in the row, Bar corresponds to the Younger Futhark bjarkan, the birch, and List read it as birth in the widest sense: the cradle and the bier as two ends of one span, and the song of becoming that runs between them. He glossed it with a saying about being born, dying and being born again, which fits his general doctrine of cyclical return rather than anything the rune poems say about birch trees. It is drawn for beginnings that arrive rather than beginnings that are made, for gestation, for family, and for continuity across a break.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period1902 to 1908 2Tradition: Armanen system (Guido von List) Origin Period800 to 1100 CE 1Tradition: Younger Futhark, the historical row von List built on Origin PeriodSixteen of the eighteen Armanen characters adapt the historical Younger Futhark script, in documented use across Scandinavia from about 800 to 1100 CE. The row itself was published by the Austrian occultist Guido von List, first as a periodical article in 1906 and then in full as Das Geheimnis der Runen in 1908. 2 Place of OriginVienna, Austria-Hungary. 2 Attributed Author / CompilerGuido von List (1848-1919). He published the row as a periodical article in 1906 and as Das Geheimnis der Runen in 1908, and did not present it as an invention: his claim was that he had recovered the secret alphabet of an 'Armanen' priest-king caste of a pre-Christian Aryan civilisation. No trace of such a caste exists in any source. 2 Origin of the NameAdapted from the historical Scandinavian rune name bjarkan, 'birch'. Sixteen of the eighteen Armanen characters are the Younger Futhark, the row genuinely used across Scandinavia in the Viking Age, and their names are largely the historical Scandinavian names, sometimes lightly altered. The meanings von List attached to them are new. 2 Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern UseThe Armanen row was formulated inside an Austrian volkisch milieu, was taken up by the Germanenorden and by later Ariosophical and SS-adjacent runic enthusiasts, and is today used both in ordinary modern esotericism and on the far right. The row itself does not distinguish the two, which is why its origin has to be stated rather than assumed. 2 Order
Position in the Sequence Attributions
Associated Sound Learn More
The Armanen Rune Bar
Bar is one of the eighteen Armanen runes, the runic row devised by the Austrian occultist Guido von List and published in his Das Geheimnis der Runen (The Secret of the Runes) in 1908, developing ideas he had begun to set out from about 1902. It is given the sound-value B.
The rune and its meaning
Von List did not recover an ancient alphabet. He built his eighteen runes on the sixteen characters of the Younger Futhark, expanded to eighteen to match the eighteen rune-charms of the Havamal in the Poetic Edda, and assigned to each a mystical meaning of his own. In his system Bar stands for birth and the birch, the cycle of becoming and concealment; the rune of coming-into-being and of what is nurtured in secret.
These readings are von List's early twentieth-century esoteric invention, not the meanings of the historical Viking-age runes, and are described here as such. The Armanen system was later taken up by volkisch and, in the 1930s and 1940s, National Socialist circles; that political appropriation is a separate and widely condemned chapter, and forms no part of the historical or comparative study of the row set out here.
What von List Took for Bar
The Armanen row is an early twentieth-century construction published by Guido von List in 1908, built from historical characters with his own names and meanings attached.
The character behind it
Bar corresponds to the Younger Futhark character whose Old Norse name was bjarkan, the birch. The rune poems gloss it as the birch or the birch twig, greenest of trees, and the association is stable across the Norse tradition. The character is common in Viking-age inscriptions as the letter B.
What von List did with it
He shortened the name to Bar, kept the B value, and gave the character a meaning within his eighteen that draws on birth and becoming rather than on the tree. The shift from a named tree to an abstract principle is typical of what the Armanen row does to its sources: the historical rune names are overwhelmingly concrete, and von List's readings overwhelmingly are not.
The frame
Von List presented the eighteen as an ancient Germanic priestly alphabet he had recovered, with the count matched to the eighteen rune-charms of the Havamal. No attested futhark has eighteen characters, and runologists treat the row as a construction of its own period.
Reception
The row was taken up in volkisch circles and, in the 1930s and 1940s, by National Socialist organisations. The atlas records that history plainly.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Attributed To
Devised by von List, by his own account during the temporary blindness following his 1902 cataract surgery, and published in Das Geheimnis der Runen in 1908.
Contained In
One of the eighteen runes of the Armanen row.
Derived From
Berkano, Runes Von List's Bar (B) derives from the Elder Futhark Berkano (birch, birth, nurture).
Disciplines That Use This
The Armanen row, a twentieth century system rather than a historical futhark.
Originates in Language
Sources
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