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

The Wunjo rune means joy, and specifically the settled shared joy of people who belong together. Wunjo is the eighth rune of the Elder Futhark, carries the sound w, and closes the first aett with the pennant-shaped stave the Anglo-Saxons called wynn. This guide covers the Wunjo rune symbol, its Old English rune poem stanza, upright and reversed readings, and Wunjo in bind runes.

What does the Wunjo rune mean?

The Wunjo rune means joy, and the particular joy it names is settled, shared, and earned rather than sudden. The name reconstructs to Proto-Germanic wunjo, a feminine noun meaning joy, delight, or pleasure, which survives directly as Old English wynn and Old High German wunna, the ancestor of modern German Wonne. Behind that sits an older root meaning to desire or to strive toward, the same root that gives English wish, Old Norse vinr for friend, and Latin venus. That etymology sets the Wunjo rune meaning apart from every other favorable rune in the row. Wunjo is not luck arriving from outside and it is not power exercised. Wunjo is the condition that exists once what a person wanted and what a person actually has finally line up, so the striving can stop. Readers who work with Wunjo describe it as the rune of the moment after, when the herd is fed, the roof holds, the quarrel is settled, and the people involved can enjoy each other's company without calculating. Ask a rune set about happiness and Wunjo is the plainest possible answer, but it always answers with company attached.

Practitioners in the Germanic reconstructionist tradition usually explain the Wunjo rune through frith, the Old English frith and Old Norse fridr, meaning the binding peace inside a kindred rather than the absence of war between nations. Frith is a state you maintain by behaving well toward your own, and Wunjo is what frith feels like from the inside. That reading explains why Wunjo so rarely turns up as a private, solitary contentment in a reading. The rune points at a hall with people in it. A second etymology runs alongside the first and is worth knowing: the Gothic letter name preserved in medieval sources appears as uuinne, which some scholars link to a word for pasture or meadow, the good grazing ground. Read that way, Wunjo means being in the right field with your own kind, animals grazing together and content because the place suits them. The two readings agree on the essentials. Joy in this rune is not an event but a location, a set of conditions you can live inside, and both the pasture and the hall have edges. Wunjo describes what is enclosed and who belongs there.

Is the Wunjo rune the same as the Wynn rune?

Wunjo and wynn are the same rune under two names. Wunjo is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name used for the Elder Futhark, and wynn is the attested Old English name for the same character in the Anglo-Saxon futhorc. Both mean joy, both carry the sound w, and both hold eighth place in the row.

How is the Wunjo rune pronounced?

Wunjo is pronounced roughly WOON-yo, with the w as an English w rather than a German v, the u as in book lengthened, and the final syllable carrying a y glide into a long o. The Old English form wynn is pronounced close to the modern English word win.

What is the difference between the Wunjo rune and Gebo?

Gebo is the gift and the exchange between two parties; Wunjo is the state that the exchange produces. Gebo describes the transaction and the obligation it creates, while the Wunjo rune describes the ease and belonging that follow once the giving has been done well. In the Elder Futhark row, Gebo sits immediately before Wunjo.

What does the Wunjo rune symbol look like and what sound does it carry?

The Wunjo rune symbol is a single vertical stave with a small closed triangle attached at the top right, a pennant flying from the head of a pole. Its Unicode form is the runic character sometimes written as a narrow flag on a mast, and modern rune sets carve it as one long line with two short strokes meeting at a point away from the stave. The Wunjo rune carries the consonant w, the sound in water, wind, and wolf, and every standard transliteration writes it as a plain w. Readers commonly describe the shape as a banner, a weather vane, or a pennant raised over a hall to show that the household is at home and receiving. What matters interpretively is that the triangle is closed. Unlike an open hook or a branch, the Wunjo pennant encloses a small area of space at the very top of the stave, and practitioners read that pocket as the thing being held: the household, the herd, the good news, the wish granted. Wunjo does not point outward or radiate. It holds, and it holds high, at the crown of the stave where a flag would be seen from a distance.

The Wunjo rune symbol has one practical problem, which is that it looks a great deal like Thurisaz. Both are a vertical stave with a closed triangle attached on one side, and on a small wooden tile turned the wrong way in poor light they are easy to confuse. The reliable difference is height. The Thurisaz triangle attaches around the middle of the stave, with clear stave showing above and below it, while the Wunjo triangle sits at the very top, its upper arm springing from the crown of the stave so that nothing rises above it. Get in the habit of finding the top of the stave first, then checking whether the pocket is at the head or the waist. The same shape had a long second life in ordinary writing. Anglo-Saxon scribes lifted wynn out of the runic row into Latin manuscripts because Latin script had no letter for the w sound, and the manuscript form of wynn is a rounded stave with a pocket at the top that sits uncomfortably close to both p and thorn. Editors of Old English texts normally replace wynn with w for readability, which is why the letter has vanished from modern printings even though scribes used it for centuries.

How do you tell the Wunjo rune apart from Thurisaz?

Check where the triangle meets the stave. On the Wunjo rune the triangle sits at the very top, with its upper arm leaving the crown of the stave and nothing above it. On Thurisaz the triangle sits at the middle, with bare stave visible both above and below the pocket. Orientation of the tile does not change this test.

What letter is the Wunjo rune in English?

The Wunjo rune is the letter w. When writing a name or word in Elder Futhark, use Wunjo for a consonantal w sound as in Wanda, Wade, or wolf. Do not use Wunjo for a w that is really part of a vowel sound, as in law or how, where the vowel rune alone does the work.

Why does the Wunjo rune look like the letter P?

The Wunjo rune resembles P because both are a vertical stroke with a closed loop at the top right, and the resemblance caused genuine trouble for medieval scribes writing the manuscript letter wynn. The similarity is coincidence rather than descent; Wunjo carries w, not p, and the runic pocket is angular where the Latin bowl is round.

Where does the Wunjo rune sit in the Elder Futhark and which aett does it close?

The Wunjo rune is the eighth rune of the Elder Futhark and the final rune of the first aett, the group of eight commonly called Freyr's aett or Freyja's aett. It closes the sequence Fehu, Uruz, Thurisaz, Ansuz, Raidho, Kenaz, Gebo, Wunjo. Readers who treat the first aett as a narrative of establishing a life read that arc as cattle and portable wealth, wild untamed strength, the thorn of threat, the mouth that speaks and orders, the road traveled, the torch and the craft it lights, the gift exchanged, and finally joy. On that reading Wunjo is the capstone, the payoff of the previous seven, the state a household reaches once wealth, strength, defense, speech, movement, skill, and generosity have all been put in place. Position matters for how the Wunjo rune reads in practice. Because Wunjo completes a cycle rather than opening one, it tends to describe arrival and consolidation rather than beginnings. In spreads that track a sequence, drawing Wunjo late is a stronger signal than drawing it early, since Wunjo prefers to be the result of a process rather than its first step.

The most instructive fact about Wunjo's position is what comes next. The very first rune of the second aett is Hagalaz, the hailstone, and the traditional order therefore puts joy directly against disruption with no cushion between them. Rune workers make a great deal of this handoff. It says that the settled contentment Wunjo describes is a real achievement and also a temporary one, held inside conditions that weather can change, and that the aett structure builds the end of comfort into the row itself. Reading Wunjo and Hagalaz together in a spread is a standard exercise for this reason. Wunjo also has a history of loss. When the runic row contracted to the sixteen characters of the Younger Futhark in the Viking Age, the w rune was dropped entirely, and scribes wrote the w sound with the u rune instead. That is why Viking-age runestones in Scandinavia carry no Wunjo at all. The Anglo-Saxon futhorc took the other path, keeping wynn in eighth place while the row expanded past twenty-nine characters, so wynn appears in Old English runic inscriptions such as the verse cut on the eighth-century whalebone Franks Casket now in the British Museum.

Which aett does the Wunjo rune belong to?

The Wunjo rune belongs to the first aett of the Elder Futhark, usually called Freyr's aett or Freyja's aett, and holds the eighth and final place in it. The first aett covers the establishment of a household and its resources, and Wunjo closes that group as its completed state.

What number is the Wunjo rune?

The Wunjo rune is number eight in the Elder Futhark, counting Fehu as one. Practitioners who use rune numerology read that eight as completion of a set rather than as a beginning, since eight is the full count of one aett and Wunjo occupies its last slot.

Why is the Wunjo rune missing from Viking-age runestones?

The Wunjo rune is missing from Viking-age Scandinavian inscriptions because the Younger Futhark reduced the row from twenty-four characters to sixteen and cut the w rune along with several others. Carvers of that period wrote the w sound using the u rune, so Wunjo survives in Viking-age Scandinavia only as an inherited memory, not as a carved letter.

What do the rune poems say about the Wunjo rune?

Only one rune poem describes Wunjo, and that is the Old English Rune Poem, which treats the rune under its Anglo-Saxon name wenne or wynn. Its stanza reads: Wenne bruceth, the can weana lyt, sares and sorge, and him sylfa haefth blaed and blysse and eac byrga geniht. In plain English, joy is enjoyed by the one who knows little of woes, of pain and sorrow, and who has for himself prosperity and bliss and also sufficiency of dwellings. That definition is worth reading slowly, because it is more concrete than most modern glosses of the Wunjo rune. The poem defines joy first by subtraction, as the condition of a person with few troubles, and then by addition, listing three things the joyful person actually possesses: blaed, meaning prosperity or renown; blysse, bliss; and byrga geniht, enough in the way of strongholds or dwellings. The Old English poet's joy therefore includes a roof, a reputation, and material sufficiency. This is not ecstasy or spiritual rapture. It is the contentment of somebody secure in a place, with standing among neighbors and no urgent lack, which is exactly the register in which the Wunjo rune reads best.

The Old English Rune Poem itself has a dramatic transmission history that readers of Wunjo should know. The poem survived in a single manuscript in the Cotton library, Otho B.x, which burned in the Ashburnham House fire of 1731. The text is known today only because George Hickes had printed it in his great survey of northern languages in 1705, so every modern quotation of the wynn stanza descends from that printing rather than from a surviving medieval page. The Norwegian and Icelandic rune poems offer nothing on Wunjo, and the reason is structural rather than accidental: both poems treat the sixteen runes of the Younger Futhark, and the w rune was not among them, so there was no stanza to write. Anyone who quotes you a Norwegian or Icelandic verse for Wunjo is quoting something modern. Outside the poems, the oldest name evidence is the Gothic letter name recorded in a ninth-century Vienna manuscript associated with Alcuin's circle, which gives a form usually read as uuinne. That form supports both the joy etymology and the alternative link to a word for pasture, and scholars have argued the case both ways for a long time without settling it.

Does the Norwegian Rune Poem mention the Wunjo rune?

The Norwegian Rune Poem does not mention Wunjo, and neither does the Icelandic Rune Poem. Both poems cover only the sixteen runes of the Younger Futhark, which dropped the w rune entirely. The Old English Rune Poem is the sole medieval verse source that describes this rune, under the name wenne.

What does byrga geniht mean in the Wunjo stanza?

Byrga geniht in the Old English wynn stanza means sufficiency of dwellings or strongholds, an abundance of secure places to live. It anchors the Wunjo rune in material security rather than mood, telling readers that Anglo-Saxon joy assumed a roof, a defensible home, and no shortage of shelter for one's people.

What tone does the Old English poem give the Wunjo rune?

The Old English poem gives the Wunjo rune a sober, domestic tone rather than an ecstatic one. Joy is described as knowing little of pain and sorrow while holding prosperity, bliss, and enough dwellings. That framing pushes readers toward interpreting Wunjo as steady well-being and social standing, not as elation or a rush of good feeling.

What does the Wunjo rune mean upright in a reading?

Upright, the Wunjo rune means yes, and it means the good outcome will be shared rather than solitary. Drawn on a question about happiness, reconciliation, a move, a partnership, or whether a long-held wish will land, Wunjo upright says the conditions have come together and the querent will feel it. The distinctive move when reading Wunjo upright is to ask who else is in the picture, because Wunjo almost never describes a private satisfaction. It describes fit between a person and a group, a household, a craft community, or a place. A querent who draws Wunjo about a job is being told the team suits them. A querent who draws it about a house is being told they will belong on that street. Wunjo upright also carries a note of relief, since its root sense is desire coming to rest. Readers often phrase it as the striving stopping, which makes it a strong sign in questions about conflicts that have dragged on, estrangements within a family, or work that has felt like pushing uphill. Where other favorable runes promise gain, the Wunjo rune promises ease.

The one real trap in reading Wunjo upright is that its contentment attaches to the present arrangement, not to whatever change the querent is hoping for. Asked whether to leave a city, quit a stable job, or end a serviceable relationship, Wunjo frequently turns up as a description of what the querent already has, which reads as an argument for staying. Practitioners handle this by checking the question wording carefully and by weighing the neighboring runes. Wunjo next to Raidho or Ehwaz shifts toward joy found through movement, while Wunjo next to Othala or Berkano hardens into joy found at home. On timing, most readers treat Wunjo as near-term. The rune describes a state already forming rather than a distant possibility, so answers of weeks rather than seasons are conventional, and Wunjo alongside Jera pushes the timing out to a full turn of the year while Wunjo alongside Isa suggests the joy is real but currently held in suspension. In outcome positions Wunjo is one of the cleanest results in the Elder Futhark, and experienced readers resist the urge to complicate it. When the answer is simply that things will be well and the querent will not be alone in it, say so.

Is the Wunjo rune a yes or no rune?

The Wunjo rune upright reads as a clear yes, particularly for questions about happiness, belonging, reconciliation, or a wish being granted. The qualification is that Wunjo says yes to the situation as it stands or as it is naturally forming, so it can read as yes to staying rather than yes to the change the querent had in mind.

What does the Wunjo rune mean as an outcome rune?

In an outcome position the Wunjo rune means the matter resolves into contentment and shared good feeling, with the querent accepted by the people involved. It signals that the strain surrounding the question ends rather than transforms. Readers treat Wunjo as one of the plainest positive outcomes in the Elder Futhark and usually deliver it without hedging.

Does the Wunjo rune indicate timing?

Readers generally treat the Wunjo rune as near-term timing, weeks rather than seasons, because it describes a state already coming together rather than a distant one. Wunjo drawn with Jera stretches the timeframe toward a full year, while Wunjo drawn with Isa indicates a joy that is real but currently frozen and waiting on a thaw.

What does Wunjo reversed or merkstave mean?

Wunjo reversed, with the pennant hanging low from the base of the stave instead of flying at its head, means sorrow, alienation, and joy that has gone wrong. The image itself is the reading: the flag has dropped, the hall is not receiving, the household has nothing to signal. Readers give Wunjo reversed several recognizable flavors. The first is straightforward grief, the Old English weana and sorge that the rune poem defined joy against. The second is exile, being cut off from a group the querent still thinks of as their own, which is the sharpest form of Wunjo reversed because the belonging that defines the rune upright is precisely what has failed. The third is frenzy, the wod state of celebration driven past its useful point into intoxication, mania, or a manufactured high that leaves nothing behind. The fourth is false cheer, a group whose harmony is maintained by everyone agreeing not to raise the real problem. Wunjo reversed is rarely catastrophic in the way Hagalaz or Nauthiz can be. It reports that the good feeling has drained out of a situation and that someone is pretending otherwise.

Working with Wunjo reversed usefully means identifying which flavor is in play, and the surrounding runes normally decide it. Wunjo reversed beside Nauthiz points at joy withheld by hard constraint, a person who cannot afford the celebration or the trip home. Beside Ansuz it points at a conversation nobody in the group is willing to have. Beside Fehu it points at a comfort bought at a price the querent has not admitted to themselves, and beside Isa it points at a friendship that has gone cold rather than hostile. Beside Gebo, the rune that immediately precedes Wunjo in the row, it usually reports an exchange that left one party feeling used, since a gift given without frith produces obligation instead of joy. The practical counsel readers give with Wunjo reversed is consistent: stop performing the happiness. The rune describes a gap between the mood on display and the mood actually present, and closing that gap, by naming the grief, by leaving the group, or by admitting the celebration is a distraction, is what turns the pennant upright again. Wunjo reversed asks the querent whose comfort is being protected by the pretense.

Can the Wunjo rune be reversed at all?

The Wunjo rune can be reversed, because its shape is not symmetrical. Turned upside down, the pennant hangs from the bottom left of the stave and the character is clearly distinguishable from upright Wunjo. This separates Wunjo from runes like Gebo, Isa, Jera, and Ingwaz, which look identical inverted and therefore have no reversed position.

What does Wunjo reversed say about a family or group?

Wunjo reversed applied to a family or group means the harmony on show is not real. It commonly describes a household keeping peace by leaving the central grievance unspoken, or one member quietly excluded while everyone maintains that nothing is wrong. Readers use it to prompt the querent to name what the group has agreed not to mention.

Is Wunjo reversed the same as merkstave Wunjo?

Merkstave Wunjo is the same drawn position as Wunjo reversed, the rune landing upside down, but the term carries a darker interpretive weight in some schools. Readers who use merkstave language treat the inverted Wunjo as an active shadow of joy, meaning frenzy and estrangement, rather than as a mere weakening of the upright meaning.

What does the Wunjo rune mean for love, work, health, and money questions?

In a love reading the Wunjo rune means recognized belonging rather than passion, the point at which two people stop auditioning for each other and settle into being at ease. Wunjo drawn for a new relationship predicts comfort and acceptance, sometimes at the expense of intensity, and drawn for an established one it confirms that the partnership is genuinely good rather than merely durable. For work and career questions Wunjo speaks to fit with colleagues and culture more than to money or advancement. It says the querent will be welcomed and will enjoy the room, which makes it a strong draw for a team move, a workshop, a guild or craft community, and a weaker answer for a question purely about salary or promotion. On health questions Wunjo reads as convalescence and morale, the phase where recovery is under way and the patient's spirits are lifting, often with the support of people around them doing the lifting. On money questions Wunjo means enough rather than surplus. The querent will have what they need and will feel secure with it, which the Old English rune poem states outright when it lists sufficiency of dwellings among the components of joy. Fehu handles increase; Wunjo handles the contentment of not needing more.

Wunjo's meaning sharpens considerably when read against its neighbors, and a few pairings come up often enough to be worth memorizing. Wunjo with Gebo is the classic partnership combination, gift and joy together, and it is the pair most often cut for handfastings and anniversaries. Wunjo with Fehu describes prosperity that the querent actually enjoys rather than hoards, money that turns into a good life. Wunjo with Ehwaz, the horse rune of trusted partnership, points at a working relationship that runs well over long distances or long timeframes. Wunjo with Berkano brings the reading into the home and the family, often around birth, a new household, or the growth of children. Against that, Wunjo with Nauthiz produces the sharp contrast of joy needed and joy denied, and readers usually take that pair as pointing at what the querent is missing rather than what they have. Wunjo with Hagalaz, the two runes that meet across the aett boundary, describes happiness that a sudden external event is about to interrupt, and it is one of the few combinations where readers will actively advise the querent to consolidate what they have while they still hold it.

What does the Wunjo rune mean in a love reading?

In a love reading the Wunjo rune means ease, acceptance, and mutual belonging, a relationship where both people can relax. It favors compatibility and shared daily life over drama or passion. Drawn for a question about whether to commit, Wunjo reads as yes, and drawn about a rocky patch, it says the underlying bond is sound enough to recover.

What does the Wunjo rune mean for a job or career question?

For a job or career question the Wunjo rune means the querent will fit the people and the culture, and will find the work satisfying to do alongside others. It is a strong sign for joining a team, a craft, or a collaborative project, and a weaker answer for questions strictly about pay or promotion, where Fehu and Sowilo speak more directly.

What does the Wunjo rune with Fehu mean together?

Wunjo with Fehu means prosperity that produces actual enjoyment rather than anxiety, wealth spent on a good life and shared with the querent's people. Fehu supplies the increase and Wunjo supplies the contentment, so the pair often turns up when money worries are ending or when a windfall will be used well rather than hoarded.

How is the Wunjo rune used in bind runes, talismans, and galdr?

The Wunjo rune is one of the most-used components in modern bind runes because its single straight stave shares easily with any other rune, letting the pennant sit at the top of a combined figure like a flag over the whole design. In current practice the common combinations are Gebo with Wunjo for a joyful partnership, cut for handfastings and given as a wedding token; Fehu with Wunjo for prosperity that is enjoyed rather than merely accumulated; Sowilo with Wunjo for a success the querent's people celebrate with them; and Berkano with Wunjo for a happy household. Be clear about provenance when you use these. Bind runes are genuinely attested in the historical record, and migration-period carvers did combine characters on a shared stave, but the specific joy-charms circulating today are modern compositions rather than inscriptions copied off an artifact. That does not make them ineffective within the tradition, since the tradition has always been a practice rather than a fixed canon, but it does mean nobody should claim a Viking pedigree for a Gebo-Wunjo pendant designed in the last few decades.

When cutting a Wunjo bind rune, the practical warning is the same one that applies to reading it: watch the height of the pennant. Slide the triangle down the shared stave while fitting other elements around it and you produce Thurisaz, which turns a charm for joy into a charm for the thorn, so keep the upper arm springing from the crown of the stave. Practitioners who work with sound intone Wunjo by drawing out the name and holding its vowel, wunjo repeated in threes and nines, sometimes reduced to the bare wu and the long o, and some schools add a standing posture in which one bent arm forms the pennant beside the head. Talismanically, Wunjo is placed where a household gathers rather than where an individual works: over a doorway, on a hearth, on the underside of a shared table, on a gift for someone joining a family. Modern rune workers often pair it with gold or golden yellow when assigning color correspondences, on the strength of its association with hall, harvest, and mead rather than any surviving source. When the situation the charm was made for has resolved, the usual practice is to retire the piece rather than keep it working indefinitely.

What is a good Wunjo bind rune for happiness?

The most widely used Wunjo bind rune for happiness joins Gebo and Wunjo on a shared vertical stave, with Gebo's crossed arms below and the Wunjo pennant at the crown, meaning joy that comes from generous exchange. For household happiness, practitioners bind Wunjo with Berkano; for prosperity that is genuinely enjoyed, Wunjo with Fehu.

Is the Wunjo rune a good choice for a tattoo?

Wunjo is a common tattoo choice because its meaning of joy and belonging is unambiguous and it carries none of the appropriation problems attached to certain other runes. The design consideration is legibility: keep the pennant clearly at the top of the stave, since a triangle placed mid-stave reads as Thurisaz to anyone who knows the row.

How is the Wunjo rune chanted in galdr?

In galdr the Wunjo rune is chanted by sounding the full name with the vowels drawn long, wunjo held and repeated in sets of three or nine, often broken down into the initial wu and a sustained o. Practitioners typically chant it while holding the carved rune or tracing its shape, standing rather than seated, with the breath kept even.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the Wunjo rune mean in one sentence?

The Wunjo rune means joy, harmony, and belonging, the contentment of a person whose wants and circumstances have finally lined up. Wunjo comes from Proto-Germanic wunjo, joy or delight, and the Old English rune poem describes wynn as the state of having little sorrow along with prosperity, bliss, and enough shelter. Wunjo is not a private high; it is joy that a household or a group of friends holds in common.

Is Wunjo a good rune to draw?

Wunjo is one of the most welcome draws in the Elder Futhark, and readers treat it as a clear yes to questions about happiness, reconciliation, belonging, and whether a wish will land. The one caution is that Wunjo describes contentment with a present arrangement, so on a question about leaving a job, a city, or a relationship, Wunjo often argues for staying rather than for the change the querent hoped it would bless.

What does Wunjo reversed mean?

Wunjo reversed, the pennant hanging low from the base of the stave, means sorrow, alienation from your own people, and joy that has curdled. Readers take Wunjo reversed as grief, exile from a group the querent still counts as home, forced cheerfulness that costs more than it gives, or the wod frenzy of celebration pushed past its useful point into intoxication. It rarely means disaster; it means the room has gone flat.

What sound and letter does the Wunjo rune represent?

The Wunjo rune represents the consonant w, as in water or wolf, and is transliterated w in every standard runic transcription. Anglo-Saxon scribes borrowed the same shape into Latin script as the manuscript letter wynn, written as a rounded stave with a pocket at the top, because Latin had no letter for the w sound. Wynn served Old English writing for centuries before the doubled u that became modern w replaced it.

Which god is associated with the Wunjo rune?

Modern practice most often assigns Wunjo to Odin under his byname Oski, the wish-granter, because Wunjo shares a root with wish and with the idea of a desire fulfilled. A second common assignment is Freyr or Frigg, on the grounds that Wunjo closes Freyr's aett and describes the peace of a well-kept hall rather than ecstatic inspiration. No surviving source names a deity for Wunjo, so both assignments are interpretive rather than attested.

Where does Wunjo sit in the Elder Futhark order?

Wunjo is the eighth rune of the Elder Futhark and the last rune of the first aett, following Fehu, Uruz, Thurisaz, Ansuz, Raidho, Kenaz, and Gebo. The very next rune in the sequence is Hagalaz, the hailstone that opens the second aett, so the traditional order places joy directly before disruption. Wunjo also holds eighth place in the Anglo-Saxon futhorc under the name wynn.

What is the difference between the Wunjo rune and Sowilo?

Wunjo and Sowilo both read as favorable, but Wunjo is joy held between people while Sowilo is the sun's own force, victory, and the energy that carries a person through. Wunjo answers who you are happy with; Sowilo answers what you have the power to accomplish. In a spread, Wunjo beside Sowilo describes a success that the querent's people celebrate with them rather than a triumph won alone.