Berkano Rune Meaning: Symbolism, Upright, Reversed and Divination Use

Berkano is the birch rune of the Elder Futhark, carrying the sound B and the meanings of birth, sheltered growth, healing and the household. This guide covers the Berkano rune symbol and its shape, its place as the eighteenth rune in Tyr's aett, what the Old English, Norwegian and Icelandic rune poems say about it, and how Berkano reads upright, reversed and inside bind runes.

What does the Berkano rune mean?

Berkano means birch, and the Berkano rune meaning in divination centers on birth, sheltered growth and the household. The name reconstructs to Proto-Germanic berkanan, the birch tree, and every branch of the tradition keeps that plant at the center: beorc in the Anglo-Saxon futhorc, bjarkan in the Norwegian and Icelandic rune poems. Birch is the pioneer tree of the north, the first hardwood to seed itself onto burned ground, glacial gravel and abandoned pasture, and the Berkano meaning was built out of that habit. Berkano is what starts quietly on ruined ground and grows before anyone thinks to look. In a spread, Berkano points to a beginning already underway but not yet visible: a pregnancy, a project in its first season, a household being formed, a body mending. It carries an enclosing quality rather than a forceful one, since Berkano shelters what is too new to defend itself. Where Fehu counts what you own and Tiwaz names what you will fight for, Berkano covers what is still gestating. Readers give Berkano the domestic sphere outright, including the home, the mother, the nurse, the midwife and the person doing the unglamorous maintenance that keeps a family standing. It is the rune of the cradle.

The birch supplies more than a growth metaphor to Berkano. Across northern Europe birch twigs were bound into besoms for sweeping a space clean and into the bundles still used to whisk the skin in a Finnish or Swedish sauna, so Berkano also carries purification, and specifically the kind of cleansing done with a light repeated touch rather than fire or flood. Birch bark peels off in sheets and was used as a writing surface, a roofing membrane and a container material, which feeds the secondary Berkano meaning of concealment: something wrapped, covered, kept from view until it is ready. That is why experienced readers treat Berkano as a rune of secrecy as much as fertility. A Berkano answer often means the matter is being handled privately and does not want daylight yet. The rune also carries a gradient of scale that surprises beginners. Berkano can indicate an actual infant, but it turns up just as often for the small, undramatic increment: one more week of sobriety, the second draft, the plant that survived the winter. Berkano rewards patience and punishes forcing, and a reader who translates every Berkano draw as pregnancy will misread most of the spreads it appears in.

Is the Berkano rune about birth or about the birch tree?

Berkano is about both, and the tree came first. The rune is named for the birch, and the birth meaning is drawn from how birch behaves: it colonizes bare ground, regrows from the base after cutting, and shelters slower trees that establish in its shade.

What are the core keywords for the Berkano rune?

The standard keyword set for Berkano is birth, fertility, growth, the home, the mother, healing, sheltering and concealment. Secondary keywords used by many readers are regeneration, incubation, purification and quiet increase, all of which follow from the birch imagery.

Is Berkano considered a positive rune?

Berkano is generally read as favorable, one of the gentler staves in the Elder Futhark, but it is passive rather than triumphant. Berkano promises growth on its own timetable, so it can frustrate a querent who wants speed, decisiveness or a public result.

What does the Berkano rune symbol look like and what sound does it make?

The Berkano rune symbol is a vertical stave with two triangular bowls stacked on its right side, giving a shape close to a capital B, and it carries the sound value b. In Unicode it is U+16D2, RUNIC LETTER BERKANAN BEORC BJARKAN B, printed as the character we transliterate simply as B. The two bowls meet at the midpoint of the stave, so the Berkano rune symbol is made of straight strokes only, with no horizontal line anywhere in it. That is not decorative. Runes were cut across the grain of wood, and a horizontal cut running with the grain would split or vanish, which is why the whole Elder Futhark avoids horizontals and why Berkano's bowls are angular triangles rather than the curved lobes of a Latin B. Carving variants exist. On some inscriptions the bowls do not quite touch the stave, and in the sixteen-rune Younger Futhark the bjarkan stave is often reduced to a single lower bowl or an open angular form, since that row had fewer characters doing more phonetic work. In the Younger Futhark bjarkan covered b and also served for p, a merger the Elder Futhark did not need because it kept Perthro separate.

The geometry of Berkano matters for anyone who reads reversals. Berkano is symmetrical along its horizontal axis, so rotating the tile 180 degrees does not turn the shape upside down in any visible way; it flips it left to right. A reversed Berkano therefore appears as a mirrored B with both bowls sitting on the left of the stave. That is easy to spot on a smooth tile, and it is the reason Berkano belongs to the reversible group rather than the eight symmetrical runes that have no distinct inverted form. Beginners most often confuse Berkano with two neighbors in the row. Wunjo has a single bowl set at the top of the stave, Thurisaz has a single bowl at the middle, and Berkano is the only Elder Futhark stave with two bowls on the same side. If a set is hand-burned or hand-painted and the bowls are drawn too small, that distinction can collapse, so many crafters deliberately cut the Berkano bowls deep and equal, and some mark the base of the stave to fix the upright orientation before staining. When writing a name in runes, Berkano handles every b, including the initial b of a word, and the doubled b of a name is normally written once in Elder Futhark practice.

What letter is the Berkano rune in English?

Berkano transliterates as B. It represents the voiced bilabial stop in every futhark row that includes it, and the Anglo-Saxon poem's name beorc and the Norse bjarkan both begin with that sound, following the acrophonic pattern used to name the runes.

How do you draw the Berkano rune correctly?

Draw one vertical stave, then cut the upper bowl as two angled strokes from the top of the stave to its midpoint, and the lower bowl as two angled strokes from the midpoint to the base. Both bowls sit on the right side and meet at the middle.

Is Berkano ever written with only one bowl?

Yes, in Younger Futhark inscriptions the bjarkan stave frequently appears with a single lower bowl or a simplified angular hook, a reduction typical of that sixteen-rune row. Elder Futhark Berkano keeps both bowls, and modern divination sets almost always use the full two-bowl form.

Where does Berkano sit in the Elder Futhark and its aett?

Berkano is the eighteenth rune of the Elder Futhark and the second rune of the third aett, the group conventionally named Tyr's aett after its opening stave. The full third aett runs Tiwaz, Berkano, Ehwaz, Mannaz, Laguz, Ingwaz, Dagaz, Othala, and this order is confirmed by the Kylver stone from Gotland, a fifth-century slab that carries the earliest complete futhark row in sequence. Berkano therefore sits immediately after Tiwaz, the rune of the sworn oath and the judged cause, and immediately before Ehwaz, the rune of the horse and the working partnership. Readers who work with aett structure make a great deal of that placement. Tyr's aett is usually treated as the social and communal third of the row, after the natural forces of Freyr's aett and the trials of Hagal's aett, and Berkano opens the human household inside it. The Tiwaz to Berkano step reads as the move from the oath to the family the oath creates, or from the warrior's public duty to the domestic order it exists to protect. Berkano to Ehwaz then steps outward again, from the sheltered infant to the partnership that carries it somewhere. Position alone gives Berkano its social register.

The aett position also sets up a set of pairings that readers use constantly. Berkano is the eighteenth rune and Perthro is the fourteenth, and the two are often taken together as the hidden interior and the thing that emerges from it, with Perthro as the lot cup or the womb as mystery and Berkano as the birth itself. Berkano and Ingwaz, the twenty-second rune, form the other standard pair: Ingwaz is gestation as stored potential, the seed held until release, while Berkano is the growth that follows once release happens. Some practitioners also read Berkano as the feminine counterweight to Tiwaz within the aett, though that gendering is a modern interpretive habit rather than anything the medieval poems state. Note that not every rune system agrees on Berkano's number. Ralph Blum's The Book of Runes, published in 1982 and responsible for introducing a great many English-speaking readers to the runes, reorders the row entirely and adds a blank rune, so a Blum-derived set will not place Berkano eighteenth. Sets that follow the traditional Kylver sequence, which is what most contemporary rune workers use, always will. Check which ordering your set follows before working with aett-based spreads, because a Berkano drawn from an eighteenth slot and a Berkano drawn from a reshuffled deck do not carry the same positional argument.

Which aett does the Berkano rune belong to?

Berkano belongs to the third aett, Tyr's aett, which contains Tiwaz, Berkano, Ehwaz, Mannaz, Laguz, Ingwaz, Dagaz and Othala. Within that group Berkano holds second place, directly after the aett's opening rune Tiwaz.

Which runes come before and after Berkano?

Tiwaz comes before Berkano and Ehwaz comes after it. Readers often summarize the sequence as oath, birth, then partnership, treating Berkano as the domestic center between Tiwaz's public duty and Ehwaz's shared movement forward.

Is Berkano's position the same in the Anglo-Saxon futhorc?

Yes. The Anglo-Saxon futhorc expands the row to twenty-nine or more characters by adding staves for sounds Old English needed, but beorc keeps the eighteenth slot inherited from the Elder Futhark, and the Old English rune poem treats it in that order.

What do the rune poems say about the Berkano rune?

Three medieval rune poems describe Berkano, and each gives it a different and useful angle. The Old English rune poem calls the rune beorc and says it bears no fruit yet still produces shoots without seed, that it is beautiful in its branches, high and gloriously helmeted in its crown, laden with leaves and reaching toward the sky. That stanza survives only through George Hickes's printed transcription of 1705, because the manuscript that held it, Cotton Otho B.x, was destroyed in the Ashburnham House fire of 1731. The Norwegian rune poem, working in the sixteen-rune row, gives bjarkan a terse couplet: birch has the greenest leaves of any shrub, and Loki was lucky in his deceit. The Icelandic rune poem is briefer still, calling bjarkan a leafy twig, a little tree and a fresh young shrub. Taken together the three stanzas describe a plant that is green, young, self-propagating and slightly odd, and only the Old English poem develops it at length. Nothing in any of the three mentions childbirth. The birth meaning that dominates modern readings is an interpretive extension, not a quotation.

The Old English stanza contains a genuine puzzle that translators still argue over. The tree it describes bears no fruit but throws up suckers, propagating from its own base rather than from seed, and it is tall with a crowned canopy. Birch does sucker and does have a light airy crown, but some scholars read the description as fitting the black poplar better, and reputable translations render beorc as poplar rather than birch for that reason. The rune name itself is unambiguous across the Germanic languages, so the likeliest explanation is that the poet was describing a related tree, or was working from a tradition that had blurred the two. The Norwegian Loki line is the other crux. It is only half a couplet, added for the rhyme in a poem where every stanza pairs a nature image with an unrelated human one, and it links Berkano's greenness to a piece of successful trickery. Some readers take it as a caution folded into the rune, meaning growth achieved through concealment or a fair surface over something less fair. Others treat it as an artifact of the poem's rhyme scheme. Both positions are defensible, and it is worth knowing the line exists before you meet a reader who cites it.

What does the Old English rune poem say about beorc?

The Old English rune poem says beorc bears no fruit but still puts out shoots without seed, has beautiful branches, and carries a high crown adorned with leaves that reaches toward the sky. It is the longest and most detailed of the three medieval stanzas on this rune.

Why does the Norwegian rune poem mention Loki in the Berkano stanza?

The Norwegian rune poem pairs each nature image with an unrelated human line for rhyme, and bjarkan's greenest leaves are matched with Loki being fortunate in his deceit. Whether that couples deception to Berkano's meaning or is purely metrical is genuinely disputed among rune readers.

Do the rune poems connect Berkano to childbirth?

No. None of the Old English, Norwegian or Icelandic stanzas mentions birth, pregnancy or motherhood. The childbirth association attached to Berkano comes from modern practice reasoning outward from the birch's regenerative habit and the rune's domestic placement in Tyr's aett.

What does the Berkano rune mean upright in a reading?

Berkano upright says that something is growing under shelter and will arrive if it is left alone to develop. In a present-position draw, Berkano indicates a situation in its early and protected stage, with more happening than the querent can currently see. In an outcome position it is one of the more reassuring answers in the row, promising increase, recovery or a safe delivery of whatever the question concerns, though on a timeline set by the thing itself rather than by the querent. As advice, Berkano upright means nurture rather than push: feed the project, protect it from scrutiny, and stop testing whether it is ready. For a health question Berkano upright reads as healing already in progress, particularly convalescence and the slow rebuilding phase after acute trouble. For a home or family question it means the household is sound or is being founded well. For a work question it means the venture is viable but early, which is often the honest answer a querent does not want. Berkano upright rarely predicts drama. If a spread is full of forceful staves and Berkano appears among them, it usually marks the one part of the situation that is quietly fine.

Position and neighbors do a lot of work with Berkano because the rune is so accommodating. Drawn for a person, Berkano upright describes a mother, a caretaker, a midwife or nurse, a homemaker, or whoever in the situation is doing the sustaining labor; it can also indicate a child, especially a very young one. Drawn for a place, Berkano is the house, the nursery, the garden, the ward, the workshop where something is being made slowly. Drawn for timing, Berkano suggests a full gestational cycle rather than a week, and readers who assign seasons give it early spring, when birch leafs out before most other trees. For a yes or no question Berkano upright is a qualified yes, meaning yes but not yet, and readers usually phrase it back to the querent as a yes that requires patience. One caution is worth carrying into every Berkano reading. The rune's protective instinct can tip into overprotection even upright, so when Berkano lands next to Isa or Naudhiz it often describes care that has become confinement, a household that has closed in on itself, or a project kept hidden so long that it has missed its moment.

What does Berkano upright mean in a love reading?

Berkano upright in a love reading points to a relationship that is domestic, nurturing and building toward a shared home. It commonly appears for moving in together, marriage, or starting a family, and it favors steady care over passion or dramatic declarations.

What does Berkano upright mean for a career question?

Berkano upright says a career venture is viable but still early, and that it needs feeding rather than launching. It suits work in care, teaching, medicine, midwifery, hospitality, horticulture and any craft where results accumulate slowly and quietly.

Is Berkano a yes or no rune?

Berkano upright answers a yes or no question as yes with a delay. The outcome is favorable but the timing is not yours to set, so readers usually deliver Berkano as a yes conditional on patience rather than as a clean affirmative.

What does Berkano reversed mean?

Berkano reversed, also called Berkano merkstave, describes growth that has stalled, care that has gone wrong, or a household under strain. The most common readings are family conflict and domestic disorder, worry about a child or a parent, difficulty conceiving or a pregnancy causing anxiety, and a project that will not develop no matter how much attention it receives. Berkano reversed also flags the specific failure mode of the upright rune: nurture turned into control. A mother who cannot release an adult child, a manager who will not let a team ship anything, a partner whose care has become surveillance, all read as Berkano reversed. A second, quieter meaning is neglect rather than smothering, since the rune governs shelter and reversal can mean the shelter is absent as easily as it can mean the shelter has become a cage. Look at the surrounding staves to decide which. Berkano reversed can also point to stagnation with no household content at all, meaning nothing is dying but nothing is moving, the birch is putting out no shoots this season. Read that way, Berkano reversed is more discouraging than frightening.

Berkano reversed is rarely a rune of endings, which distinguishes it sharply from Hagalaz or Naudhiz appearing in the same slot. The situation is not being destroyed; it is being held back, and that usually means something correctable. When Berkano reversed lands in an advice position, the standard reading is to identify what the querent is over-managing and stop, or to look for the thing that has been left unattended and attend to it. Practitioners who take the Norwegian rune poem seriously add one more layer, reading Berkano reversed as the Loki side of the birch: a pleasant surface with something concealed under it, a home that presents well and is not well, or a growth that turns out to have been fed by a deception. That reading should be offered carefully and only when other staves support it. Not every reader uses reversals at all. Many cast only upright, on the grounds that the medieval sources say nothing about inverted staves and that the eight symmetrical runes cannot be reversed anyway, which makes the system inconsistent. If you work upright-only, Berkano's harder meanings simply come through its neighbors instead, and a Berkano flanked by Isa and Thurisaz says everything a reversed Berkano would.

What does Berkano reversed mean for pregnancy or fertility questions?

Berkano reversed on a fertility question indicates delay, anxiety and complication rather than a verdict. It commonly reads as a process taking longer than hoped, medical worry, or strain between partners about the attempt. It is not a prediction of loss and should never be delivered as one.

What does Berkano reversed mean for health?

Berkano reversed on a health question suggests recovery that has stalled, a body not getting the rest or care it needs, or the exhaustion of the person doing the caring. Readers often turn Berkano reversed back on the caregiver rather than the patient.

Is Berkano reversed always a negative rune?

No. Berkano reversed marks obstruction rather than catastrophe, and it usually names something fixable: care misapplied, growth held too tightly, or shelter withdrawn. Read next to a strong rune such as Sowilo or Tiwaz, Berkano reversed can simply mean this is the wrong season for the thing.

How is the Berkano rune used in bind runes and rune magic?

Berkano is used in bind runes and talismans for birth, healing, household protection and anything that needs to develop quietly, and it is one of the most frequently bound staves in modern practice for exactly that reason. The standard fertility and safe-birth bind stacks Berkano with Ingwaz, putting the seed and the growth in one figure, and practitioners often add Laguz for the waters and the intuitive, flowing element of the process. A household bind commonly joins Berkano to Othala for the inherited home and Fehu for the household's material sufficiency. For convalescence, Berkano is bound with Sowilo, adding the sun's returning vitality to Berkano's slow repair, or with Uruz where physical strength has to be rebuilt. Because Berkano shares a vertical stave with almost every other rune in the row, it binds cleanly, and the resulting figure usually stays legible. Beyond bind runes, Berkano appears in galdr, the practice of vocalizing a rune, where it is intoned on the sung name and the b sound is used to open and close the breath. Berkano is also carved on objects associated with the home, on cradles, thresholds and kitchen tools, in contemporary practice.

Two cautions belong with any Berkano working. First, Berkano is not a protective rune in the warding sense, and it is regularly asked to do a job it does not do. Berkano shelters by enclosing and nourishing, which is very different from Algiz repelling a threat or Thurisaz meeting it with force. A bind rune built on Berkano to keep something out will disappoint; a bind rune built on Berkano to keep something safe inside is doing the rune's actual work. Second, Berkano intensifies whatever it covers, so binding it to a stave already associated with stagnation, such as Isa, produces a figure that holds a situation still rather than growing it. The materials tradition around Berkano is straightforward and pleasingly literal. Practitioners who cut talismans in wood favor birch for Berkano work, and birch is easy to source, pale enough to take a stained cut clearly and soft enough to carve by hand. Birch bark is also used as a writing surface for a petition that is meant to be temporary, since it curls and degrades on its own. Where a working is meant to end when the thing it shelters is born or finished, that impermanence is the point. Berkano also appears in the stadhagaldr posture systems set out in modern rune handbooks, notably Edred Thorsson's Futhark of 1984, where the practitioner shapes the stave with the body while intoning it. Those postures are twentieth-century inventions built on the runic shapes rather than inherited technique, and reputable authors say so, but they remain a common way for practitioners to learn Berkano by feel rather than by keyword.

What is the best bind rune with Berkano for fertility?

The most common fertility bind rune joins Berkano with Ingwaz, sometimes with Laguz added. Berkano carries the growth, Ingwaz the stored seed and the moment of release, and Laguz the waters and intuition. All three share simple angular strokes, so the combined figure stays readable.

How is Berkano used in galdr chanting?

In galdr, Berkano is vocalized on its name, drawn out as ber-ka-no or as a sustained b-vowel sequence, repeated a fixed number of times over the object or person being worked on. Practitioners use it for healing work, over a pregnant belly, and when consecrating a home.

What material should Berkano be carved into?

Birch is the traditional choice for carving Berkano, matching the rune's own name, and birch bark is used where the working is meant to be temporary. Clay, bone and unglazed ceramic are also used, though nothing in the medieval record prescribes a material for any individual rune.

How does the Berkano rune read alongside other runes in a spread?

Berkano takes its specific subject from the runes around it, which makes neighbor pairings the fastest way to read it accurately. Berkano with Fehu turns the growth financial, indicating a household's income increasing or a business in its first profitable season. Berkano with Jera is the strongest growth combination in the row, since Jera supplies the full harvest cycle that Berkano's development needs; together they say the thing will complete, in its own year. Berkano with Perthro puts the emphasis on what is still hidden, often a secret pregnancy, an undisclosed plan, or news not yet shared. Berkano with Wunjo is domestic happiness plainly stated, and it is one of the friendliest pairs a reader will draw. Berkano with Mannaz brings other people into the household, meaning extended family, a partner's relatives, or a community forming around the home. Berkano with Ehwaz, its neighbor in the aett, indicates a household on the move, including relocation. Berkano with Othala roots the growth in inherited ground, family property or ancestral obligation. In each case Berkano supplies the nurturing verb and the partner rune supplies the noun.

The harder pairings are worth knowing in detail. Berkano with Isa freezes the process, describing a pregnancy, project or recovery that has paused, and it is the clearest stall signal involving this rune. Berkano with Hagalaz means the disruption is landing on the home or on the vulnerable new thing itself, which reads as a household crisis rather than a career one. Berkano with Naudhiz is need pressing on the family, meaning caregiving under constraint, financial strain in the home, or someone sustaining others without enough for themselves. Berkano with Thurisaz sets nurture against reactive force and usually points to conflict inside the household or to a threat aimed at something defenseless. Berkano with Tiwaz, its neighbor on the other side, is the classic duty-versus-home tension: an oath, a court matter or a public obligation pulling against domestic life. Berkano with Kenaz can go two ways, either as the torch brought into the nursery, meaning insight about the household, or as fire near something flammable. Read positionally as well as by pair, because Berkano in a past position means the situation was once sheltered and no longer is, and that reframes every other rune on the cloth.

What does Berkano with Ingwaz mean together?

Berkano with Ingwaz is the gestation pairing: Ingwaz holds the potential and marks the moment it is released, Berkano carries the growth that follows. Drawn together they strongly favor conception, a project finally beginning after a long incubation, or a completed cycle of internal work becoming visible.

What does Berkano with Isa mean in a reading?

Berkano with Isa means growth has stopped. It describes a pregnancy, recovery or venture that has stalled, or a household frozen in unspoken tension. The pair is not destructive, but it says nothing will move until the ice condition named by Isa is addressed.

Which rune most sharpens Berkano's meaning in a spread?

Jera sharpens Berkano most usefully, because Jera supplies the completed cycle that Berkano's slow development implies but does not guarantee. Berkano alone says it is growing; Berkano with Jera says it will finish, on a full seasonal timeline rather than a short one.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the Berkano rune mean in one sentence?

Berkano means birch, and in divination the Berkano rune means a beginning that grows under cover: birth, pregnancy, healing, the household, and anything new enough that it still needs sheltering rather than exposure. Readers treat Berkano as the rune of the cradle and the sickroom, not the battlefield.

Is Berkano a fertility rune?

Berkano is the rune most often drawn for fertility questions, but it is not exclusively about conception. Berkano covers gestation of any kind, including a manuscript, a business, a recovery, or a household being formed. When a fertility question is on the table, Berkano upright is read as favorable and as advice to stop forcing the process and let it incubate.

What does Berkano reversed mean in a love reading?

Berkano reversed in a love reading points to a domestic problem rather than an absence of feeling. Common readings are a home that has become a place of tension, care that has curdled into control, a partner who is smothered by being looked after, or family pressure applied from outside the couple. Berkano reversed rarely says leave; it says the nest itself needs work.

Which goddess is associated with the Berkano rune?

Modern rune workers most often assign Berkano to Frigg, the Norse goddess of the household and childbirth, and to earth-mother figures such as Nerthus, whom Tacitus describes being carried in a covered wagon. Some practitioners connect Berkano to Freyja instead. No surviving medieval source names a deity for Berkano, so these pairings are modern devotional choices rather than attested lore.

What number is Berkano in the Elder Futhark?

Berkano is the eighteenth rune of the twenty-four-rune Elder Futhark and the second rune of the third aett, Tyr's aett. It follows Tiwaz, the seventeenth rune, and precedes Ehwaz, the nineteenth. The Anglo-Saxon futhorc keeps beorc in the same eighteenth position even though that row expands to twenty-nine or more characters.

Can the Berkano rune be reversed, or is it non-reversible?

Berkano can be reversed. It is one of the Elder Futhark staves whose upside-down form is visually distinct, unlike Gebo, Hagalaz, Isa, Jera, Eihwaz, Ingwaz, Dagaz and Othala, which look the same either way. Because Berkano is symmetrical top to bottom, turning the tile 180 degrees moves both bowls to the left of the stave, giving the mirrored B that readers call Berkano reversed or Berkano merkstave.

What does the Berkano rune mean as a tattoo or pendant?

People wear the Berkano rune symbol to mark a birth, a recovery, a household, or motherhood, and it is common as a memorial or milestone piece rather than a protective one. Anyone wearing Berkano should know that it reads as nurture and shelter, not defense; Algiz and Thurisaz carry the warding function that people sometimes expect from Berkano.