Dagaz (ᛞ)
Pronunciation: DAH-gahz · Latin equivalent: D · Týr’s ætt, seventh rune
Name and meaning
Proto-Germanic dagaz, “day” — but truly the daybreak: the hinge where night becomes morning. The stave is two triangles meeting at a point, dark and light touching. In lands where winter nights swallow the clock, dawn is not a scheduling detail; it is deliverance.
In the rune poems
Attested only in the Anglo-Saxon poem (dæg), which calls day beloved light, hope and comfort to rich and poor alike — the medieval scribe’s frame around a joy older than the frame. Dropped from the Younger Futhark.
Upright
Breakthrough: the turn from dark to light, transformation completed, clarity arriving all at once the way dawn does. A threshold crossed for good. Among the most hopeful staves in the row.
Merkstave
This rune is one of the nine that cannot reverse: its form reads the same either way up. If your set marks each stone’s bottom (see Casting the Runes: Merkstave and the Marked Stone), it may still fall merkstave, and a shadow reading applies — the same force obstructed, frozen, or turned inward. Otherwise, take it as it lies. Read in shadow: dawn resisted — the breakthrough available but refused because the dark is familiar.
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