Wunjo

Wunjo is the eighth and final rune of the first aett of the Elder Futhark, carrying the phoneme "w." Its reconstructed name means joy or bliss. The rune closes the aett of Freyr on a note of well-being: harmony, comfort and the contentment of one who wants for nothing and is free of sorrow. Its name is among the more stable across the Germanic languages.

Wunjo stands eighth and last in the aett of Freyr. Its Old English futhorc counterpart, wynn, meaning joy, receives a stanza in the Old English Rune Poem describing joy as belonging to one who knows little of suffering, sorrow or anxiety, and who has prosperity and happiness enough to be content. Wunjo is another of the eight Elder Futhark runes with no surviving Younger Futhark counterpart, so it is attested only in the Old English poem.

Runologists reconstruct the Proto-Germanic form behind the name as *wunjō, part of the comparative linguistic evidence, alongside cognate vocabulary across the older Germanic languages, used to establish the name's original sense independent of the later rune poems themselves. The Old English futhorc's own list of twenty-nine runes retained Wunjo unchanged in shape and value, unlike some later Anglo-Saxon additions devised for sounds the original twenty-four did not cover.

Runic inscriptions record names, memorials and charms rather than a standardized divinatory set. In the modern revival Wunjo is read for joy, harmony, fellowship, and the fulfillment of a wish. This keyword meaning is a twentieth-century reconstructionist and esoteric development, popularized in the 1980s, and is presented here as a symbolic tradition rather than as ancient practice or a predictive instrument.

Wunjo's Old English stanza is among the more straightforwardly positive of the whole rune poem, and the modern divinatory tradition, a twentieth-century construction rather than an ancient practice, has generally kept that positive sense intact, reading Wunjo for joy, harmony and fellowship with comparatively little of the reinterpretation or darkening some other runes, such as Thurisaz or Kenaz, underwent when their divided or difficult older attestations were adapted for modern keyword use.

The Armanen-descended rune-magic tradition transmitted into English chiefly through Thorsson's work also treats Wunjo as usable actively rather than only read passively: chanted aloud as galdr, or carved into wood, metal or a bind-rune combining several staves, for an intended practical effect. No source earlier than the twentieth century attests any such active magical use of this specific rune, and the practice should be understood as a modern reconstruction built on the reconstructed name and the rune poems rather than as a recovered ancient technique.