Odal, or Othala

The rune odal, ᛟ, is a letter in the Elder Futhark alphabet, as well as the Anglo-Saxon futhorc. It represents the “o” sound. Odal does not appear in the runic alphabet of the Viking Age, the Younger Futhark—indeed, the rune itself seems to have dropped out of circulation in Scandinavia by the 6th century. It did, however, survive in Anglo-Saxon England, and the Old English Rune Poem gives the rune name the meaning of “an inherited estate,” and Michael Barnes suggests its probable name as “an inherited possession.”[1] It is now popularly associated with the god Óðinn, as well as nationalistic conceptions of “our land” and “our inheritance.” As Barnes points out, however, “[e]vidence-based understanding of runes and runic writing provides no warrant for any of this … [t]he sources show [odal] to be a rune of the older futhark and the Anglo-Frisian futhorc … no more, no less.”[2]

Odal is a common symbol in both Norse neo-paganism, or heathenry, and white-nationalist, white-supremacist organizations. As the ADL rightly points out, it is always important to take context into account when one encounters the odal symbol “in the wild,” so to speak. One person’s runic alphabet is another person’s rallying cry for a race war. As a general rule, however, when odal has “wings,” or feet, as in the middle image above, it is a safer bet than not that the rune is being used in its white supremacist context, as such a stylized odal was made popular in Nazi Germany and by the White Liberation Movement, a South African neo-Nazi group. The American neo-Nazi party, the National Socialist Movement, also changed their logo from the swastika to the odal rune following the election of Donald Trump, hoping to better present themselves to a mainstream audience.

The Medieval Church

Pelayu/Pelagius of Asturias