THE RUNE: ODAL / OÐAL / ÓÐAL / OTHALA / OTHILAZ

Variation on Odal.

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Name: Odal, Oðal, Óðal, Othala, Othilaz
Aettir: Tyr
Sound value: /o/
Usually associated with:
Symbolises: ancestral land, heritage, kin, property.

Basic meaning:
Odal is named after its meaning which means heritage land.

Structure of the rune:
The Odal rune is made up of two main staffs and two bi-staffs, the main staffs are arranged like a tick mark (x) with one bi-staffs attached to the top of each main staffs pointing upwards, one bi-staff starts from the top of the right main staff while the other bi-staff starts from the left top of the other main staff. The bi-staffs then meet with their tops and are attached.
The bi-staffs can also have a round shape.

The sound value of the rune:
In the Proto-Norse Futhark, Odal has the sound value /o/.

Rune Poems

The three rune poems.
The names and symbolism of the runes are based mainly on three poems, which are the Old Icelandic, the Old Norwegian and the Anglo-Saxon. The Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian rune poems contain only 16 poems because they belong to the Younger Futhark, while the Anglo-Saxon rune poem contains 29 poems because the Anglo-Saxon/Frisian rune line futhorc contains 29 runes. The Anglo-Saxon rune poems have then been combined with the proto-norse runes that lack Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian rune poems, which is not at all wrong because the Anglo-Saxon futhorc also has the eight runes that lack old nordic poems.

Swedish runic poems.
There is also something called the Swedish rune poems, these arise in connection with rune staves (prim staves rune calendars,), rune staves have been found from the 12th century but the use of rune staves is known from the 5th century.

We have also chosen to include the Swedish rune poems, which are 14 verses, each of which contains only one line.
These were transcribed by the runologist Johannes Bureus in the 16th century from a rune staff believed to be from the same period. We have taken a more normalised text made by Arend Quak in 1987.
Under the poem marked with ‘-’ there are representations of meanings and symbols of agricultural life. These meanings and signs are taken from when they were recorded by the early modern researcher Georg Stiernhielm.

The different interpretations, meanings and symbolisms of runes.
You can find all sorts of interpretations and meanings of runes in books and online, all these interpretations, meanings, symbolisms and assumptions are usually based on what the author himself has interpreted the meaning of each rune, based on any or all of the three poems. But each rune has only one basic meaning, which is what the rune name means.