Name and sound values
Bjarkan is a historically transmitted name of the rune and denotes birch twig or birch. In the Younger Futhark the sign could cover the sound values /b/p/.
Reducing the row from 24 to 16 signs meant that one rune wrote several different sounds. The correct reading therefore depends on vocabulary, grammar, and inscriptional context.
Historical use
Younger runes primarily served writing: on memorial stones, everyday objects, ownership marks, and short messages. Magical inscriptions exist, but they do not turn every rune into an independent magical sign.
The Norse rune poems
The Norwegian and Icelandic rune poems do comment on the sixteen Younger Futhark runes. They survive, however, only through medieval manuscripts and may transmit divergent imagery.
The poems describe growth without fruit and a leafy twig. An exclusive equation with motherhood narrows the source.
Modern interpretation
Present-day practice may use Bjarkan as a symbolic field for “birch twig or birch”. Such reflection is modern; the rune poems offer images and mnemonics, not a complete surviving system for drawing individual oracle stones.
Rune poems in the original
Old Norwegian
Norwegian Rune Poem
Bjarkan er laufgrønstr líma; Loki bar flærða tíma.Birch has the leaf-greenest branches; Loki brought a time of deceit.
A sense-based working translation. The second line is often an independent gnomic statement; a direct semantic link to the rune must not be assumed.
Old Icelandic
Icelandic Rune Poem
Bjarkan er laufgat lim ok lítit tré ok ungsamligr viðr.Birch is a leafy branch, a little tree, and youthful wood.
The stanza describes the birch botanically and as young, growing wood.