Armanen Runes
Is
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Origin 1902 to 1908
Ninth in List's row and taken from the Younger Futhark iss, ice, this rune is where Armanism's emphasis on the will is most explicit. List read Is as the unbending self: the concentrated ego able to still and command what surrounds it, ice as the state in which motion has been mastered rather than merely stopped. The rune poems make ice a bridge and a hazard, cold and glittering; the doctrine of magical will imposed on it belongs to the occult revival of List's own generation rather than to anything Norse. It is drawn for concentration, for holding a position, for the arrest of a process, and, read badly, for rigidity.
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 iss, 'ice'. 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 Is
Is 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 I.
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 Is stands for ice, the ego and the concentrated will; the doubt-free self, the power to hold firm through one's own certainty.
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 Is
The Armanen row was published by Guido von List in 1908 and is his construction. Each character has a historical original and a layer he added.
The character behind it
Is corresponds to the Younger Futhark character whose Old Norse name was iss, meaning ice. The rune poems describe it as a bridge that is broad and bright and cannot be trusted, and the gloss is consistent across the Norse and English traditions. In the inscriptional record it is a single vertical stroke doing ordinary work as the letter I.
What von List did with it
He kept the I value and the name in Germanised form, and gave the character a meaning within his eighteen. A single vertical stroke is the simplest character in any futhark, and von List makes something of that simplicity in his own system; the medieval material does not.
The claim
Von List presented the eighteen as an ancient Germanic priestly alphabet, recovered rather than composed, with its count taken from the eighteen rune-charms of the Havamal in the Poetic Edda. Historians of runology do not accept the recovery claim and describe the row as an early twentieth-century esoteric invention.
Reception
The Armanen row was taken up in volkisch circles and, in the 1930s and 1940s, by National Socialist organisations. This atlas records that plainly, and keeps the Armanen row distinct from the historical Elder and Younger Futharks it borrows from.
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
Von List's Is (I) derives from the Elder Futhark Isa (ice, stillness).
Disciplines That Use This
The Armanen row, a twentieth century system rather than a historical futhark.
Originates in Language
Sources
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