The Names of the Runic Characters
The Color Code: Green is Frey's Aett; Blue is Hagal's Aett; Yellow is Tyr's Aett. (The colors chosen here are arbitrary.)
Runes were the characters of an alphabet that was used by the Norse, the Germanic, and the Anglo-Saxon peoples of Northwestern Europe, from the 3rd Century of the Common Era until as late as the 17th Century. Each character was a phonetic symbol (as is indicated above by its Latin equivalent) but was also a pictogram, with a general meaning conveyed by the character's name. The standard set of 24 Norse runes shown in the chart is sometimes referred to as The Elder Futhark. The term "futhark" is derived from the sounds of the first 6 characters taken together, much as the word "alphabet" comes from the "alpha" and "beta" of the characters we are nowadays accustomed to.
The Elder Futhark is commonly divided into three "aetts" of 8 runes each. The first is named for Frey, Norse god of summer and fertility. The second, Hagal's Aett, refers for some peculiar reason to hail and ice. The third is named for Tyr, who was the Norse god of war.
For some reason, there are those other than philologists for whom the characters of the Elder Futhark hold a certain odd fascination. To me, they feel a bit like something I recognize---or at least, perhaps, like something that I should recognize. Such a curious sense of recognition tends to catch my attention these days. I've included the chart here for no particular reason other than that. . .