Name and sound values
Lögr is a historically transmitted name of the rune and denotes water or body of water. In the Younger Futhark the sign could cover the sound values /l/.
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.
Water appears as a flowing force and habitat. Intuition and emotion are modern metaphorical extensions.
Modern interpretation
Present-day practice may use Lögr as a symbolic field for “water or body of water”. 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
Lǫgr er, fællr ór fjalle foss; en gull ero nosser.Water is a waterfall falling from a mountain; ornaments are made of gold.
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
Lögr er vellanda vatn ok viðr ketill ok glömmungr grund.Water is welling water, a wide kettle, and the field of the fish.
The final phrase is a kenning for the sea or water as the fish’s dwelling place.