Ætt 1 · Pos. 2

Name

A birch tree.

Meaning

The poems all see the birch at its freshest, in new green leaf. The English poem adds a riddle: the birch bears no fruit, yet new shoots grow from it without any seed. The answer may lie in how the birch grows: cut it down, and it sprouts again from the stump and the roots. Birch is the first tree to leaf in spring and the first to take bare ground, and when the ice withdrew after the last ice age, birch led the first forests of the North. After the wolf runs and the world ends, Völuspá sees the earth come up a second time out of the sea, green again.

The poems

English Rune Poem

Birch is without fruit,
yet it bears all the same
shoots without seed;
it is lovely in its branches,
high in its crown,
fairly adorned,
laden with leaves,
reaching to the sky.

Icelandic Rune Poem

Birch is a leafy branch,
and a little tree,
and young wood.

Norwegian Rune Poem

Birch is the greenest-leaved
of branches;
Loki brought the time of deceit.

Swedish Rune Poem

Birch is greenest grove.