Wunjo
joy•harmony•belonging
In the poems the rune is called: wenne (Old English) sound «w» ᚹ
Wunjo comes when you can finally breathe out and let the good in.
The meaning
Wunjo is joy: the deep ease of being where you belong. It is a different thing from the quick spark of a pleasure that fades. It is harmony after a long strain: people at peace with one another, work that fits your hands, the quiet perfection of an ordinary good day. It often arrives right after a hard stretch, as the turn toward light. Many guard against happiness harder than against sorrow, because it can be lost. Wunjo says: let it in anyway.
A modern reading, grounded in the poems below.
Reversed
Reversed, Wunjo is joy withheld or postponed. A sadness, a sense of being out of place, a happiness pushed off to some later day that keeps not arriving. The capacity for joy has not left you. It has been buried under duty or grief. Do not force cheerfulness. Just look for one small true good thing and let it be real. Joy usually returns the way a thaw comes: quietly, from the edges, before you notice.
Reversed readings are a modern practice.
For you
What joy are you postponing, and why?
The poems
Wenne bruceþ, ðe can weana lyt
sares and sorge and him sylfa hæfþ
blæd and blysse and eac byrga geniht.
Joy belongs to the one who knows little of woe,
of pain and sorrow, and who has for himself
prosperity and gladness, and a house that is enough.
why the poem never names it
The poem never names the rune. Each stanza is a riddle whose answer is the name, and the name printed above it in every edition was put there by a later hand.
The same reason as Gebo. The letter w did not survive into the sixteen, so the rune that closes Freyr's ætt is spoken for in English alone.
where these texts come from
Text after Dickins 1915. Checked against Halsall 1981. Translated here from the originals.
Where it comes from
The old poem says the joyful one is the person who has enough, who knows few sorrows, and has light and warmth and the company of others. Notice that word: enough. Wunjo is not the joy of getting more and more. It is the joy of no longer needing more. This rune closes the first family of the eight, the family that opened with wealth. The old carvers set it there on purpose. The road that begins with the question of having ends, if you walk it honestly, at the quiet of being content.
The last half-line is worth keeping whole. Byrga geniht is enough of a house. Not a great house. Enough.