Algiz
ᛉ · Old English eolhx
Everything written here is yours to read. The runes themselves open with The Coven, and the first thirty days cost nothing.
Z. (the ?-sedge) is mostly to be found in a marsh; it grows in the water and makes a ghastly wound, covering with blood every warrior who touches it.
The Anti-Defamation League lists this rune, under the name Life Rune, in its database of hate symbols: Nazi Germany used it for the Lebensborn programme. The ADL also says that it continues to be used by people who are not racists, typically followers of neo-pagan religions, and that no one should simply assume a particular use is racist rather than judging it in its context. It is here because it is one of the twenty-four. It is not here for them.
The Old English Rune Poem is the fullest surviving poem about the runes. It describes the Anglo-Saxon futhorc, which grew out of the Elder Futhark, so the stanza below belongs to the Old English rune that continues this one rather than to the Elder Futhark rune itself.
The Anglo-Saxon Runic Poem, translated by Bruce Dickins in Runic and Heroic Poems of the Old Teutonic Peoples (Cambridge University Press, 1915). The text and the runes are in the public domain.
The letterform is redrawn from the public-domain vector runes on Wikimedia Commons, set on a common canvas so every rune in the row is the same size.
The Old English name eolhx is itself uncertain. Dickins records the emendation eolugsecg, elk-sedge, a marsh grass, and prints a question mark where the first word should stand.