Eihwaz
Guardian of Flame
The Elder Futhark rune of the yew tree, symbolizing endurance, resilience, and transformation between life and death.
Both Norse poems describe the Younger Futhark of sixteen letters, which had dropped this rune, so the Old English poem is the only medieval gloss it has: the yew is a tree rough on the outside, hard and fast in the earth, held up by its roots, a guardian of flame and a joy upon the estate. What guardian of flame means is not agreed, the wood's use in fires and torches being the usual guess. The name is reconstructed, and the Elder Futhark sound value is genuinely uncertain, transliterated ï or æ for want of anything better. The death-and-rebirth and world-tree readings attached to it are twentieth-century.
Light
A tree that holds, and is valued for holding: rooted hard, long-lived, keeping fire, standing where it was planted. The stanza's only verdict on it is that it is a joy upon the estate.
Shadow
The same fixity is immovability, and roughness is the first thing said of the tree. The yew is also poisonous in nearly every part, a fact the poem never raises and later readers rarely forget.
