Armanen Runes
Eh
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Origin 1902 to 1908
Seventeenth in the row, Eh is one of the two characters List added to the sixteen-rune Younger Futhark to reach the eighteen he wanted. He read it as marriage: lasting union, partnership, and a bond held together by law as well as by feeling, extended to any two things joined permanently rather than temporarily. Armanen practice draws it for commitment, for durable alliances, and for the difference between a contract and an attachment.
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 NameNot a Younger Futhark character. Eh is one of the two characters von List added to bring the row to eighteen, a number he took from the eighteen charms of the Havamal. The name and the meaning are his. 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 Eh
Eh 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 E.
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 Eh stands for marriage and lawful union, two made one in enduring love; loyalty, and the lasting tie between kindred spirits.
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.
Eh: One of the Two von List Added
Sixteen of the eighteen Armanen runes correspond to characters of the Younger Futhark. Eh is one of the two that do not, and it is where the constructed nature of the row is easiest to see.
Where the name comes from
The name echoes the Elder Futhark character conventionally read as ehwaz, the horse. The Elder Futhark is the older and longer row of twenty-four characters used in the earliest Germanic inscriptions, and it went out of use in Scandinavia well before the Viking age, when the sixteen-character Younger Futhark replaced it.
Why the addition was needed
Guido von List wanted eighteen characters, because the Havamal in the Poetic Edda lists eighteen rune-charms. The Younger Futhark supplied sixteen. Two more had to come from somewhere, and this is one of them, its name taken from the older row that his sixteen did not come from.
That is the whole argument against reading the Armanen row as a transmitted alphabet in a sentence: it mixes two rows separated by centuries in order to hit a number taken from a poem that is not about an alphabet at all.
The frame and the reception
Von List published the row in 1908 and presented it as recovered rather than composed. Runologists do not accept that. The row was afterwards taken up in volkisch circles and by National Socialist organisations in the 1930s and 1940s, and this atlas records that reception 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
Ehwaz, Runes Von List's Eh (E) derives from the Elder Futhark Ehwaz (horse, trust, partnership).
Disciplines That Use This
The Armanen row, a twentieth century system rather than a historical futhark.
Originates in Language
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