Name and sound values
Þurs is a historically transmitted name of the rune and denotes þurs, a dangerous superhuman being. In the Younger Futhark the sign could cover the sound values /þ/ð/.
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 stanzas associate þurs with danger and illness. This is closer to the sources than a modern reduction to mere “assertiveness”.
Modern interpretation
Present-day practice may use Þurs as a symbolic field for “þurs, a dangerous superhuman being”. 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
Þurs vældr kvinna kvillu; kátr værðr fár af illu.The thurs causes sickness in women; few are made glad by misfortune.
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
Þurs er kvenna kvöl ok kletta búi ok varðrúnar verr.The giant is the torment of women, the dweller in the cliffs, and Varðrún’s husband.
Varðrún is otherwise difficult to identify; the manuscripts also associate the stanza with the Latin Saturnus.