Raido, the rune of the journey and the ride

Anyone who has seen a Latin R beside the raido rune will hardly doubt their kinship. The runic sign is more angular, with no curves, but the structure is the same: a vertical stave, a loop and a slanting leg. This very resemblance is one of the arguments for the Latin origin of the runes. The name, on the other hand, tells a different story: raido means the ride, the journey on horseback.

A name between horses and wagons

The reconstructed Common Germanic form, raidō, is linked to the verb meaning to ride, from which come English ride and German reiten. In Old Norse the rune was called reið, in Old English rad. The word could denote both the act of riding and the vehicle, and modern English road is a distant relative. For a society in which the horse was a mark of rank, the journey on horseback evoked freedom, strength and social standing.

In inscriptions the rune simply represents the sound r. The Younger Futhark, however, also had another rune for a particular r, yr, derived from the old Proto-Norse z, and the two came to be confused during the Middle Ages. The difference shows above all at the end of words, where yr often marked nominative endings.

Verses with a smile

The Old English Rune Poem treats the rune with an irony rare in these texts. It says that riding, indoors in the hall, seems easy to every warrior, but is hard for the one who sits on a sturdy horse along the miles of road. It is the contrast between travel tales told at the feast and the real toil of the journey: a common-sense observation, almost a proverb.

The Norwegian poem also plays with perspective. It states that riding is the worst thing for horses, and adds a reference to legend: Reginn forged the finest sword. Reginn is the smith of the Volsung saga, who forges for the hero Sigurd the sword with which he will slay the dragon Fáfnir. The link with the rune seems to rest on sound more than sense.

The Icelandic poem calls riding “sitjandi sæla”, the bliss of the one who sits, a swift journey and the toil of the horse. The three versions, though different, share a realistic gaze: the journey is a pleasure for the rider and a burden for the one who carries. It is a realism that often recurs in Norse gnomic poetry, attentive to the concrete toil of life.

Journeys and rune stones

The theme of travel, moreover, runs through the whole of runic epigraphy. Many Viking Age stones commemorate men who set out east or west: the Ingvar stones in Sweden remember the members of an expedition to Serkland, the Norse term for the Islamic lands, around 1040. Others mention England, Greece, meaning the Byzantine Empire, or Jerusalem.

No ancient source gives raido a magical meaning connected with journeys, and the protective value sometimes assigned to it today belongs to modern interpretations. Its historical interest lies elsewhere: in a single rune are woven together the shape of a Latin letter, the name of an aristocratic activity and the irony of medieval poets who knew the price of the road all too well.