Thurisaz
Sharp, and Evil to Grasp
The th-rune, named for the thurs or giant, and renamed thorn by the Anglo-Saxons, who called it evil to touch.
The reconstructed name is thurisaz, a thurs or giant. The Anglo-Saxons kept the sound and changed the word: their poem gives thorn, exceedingly sharp, an evil thing for any man to touch, uncommonly severe on all who rest among them. Both Norse poems keep the giant, and both make him a torment to women. The Norwegian says the thurs causes anguish to women, and that misfortune makes few men cheerful; the Icelandic calls him the torture of women, cliff-dweller and husband of a giantess. The letter outlived the alphabet it belonged to: thorn was borrowed into the Latin script of Old English as the letter þ, and is still in use in Icelandic today.
Light
Defence, and the force to break a thing open. The thorn is hostile to whoever grasps it and is also the reason the hedge holds: a boundary made of something that hurts.
Shadow
Both Norse poems read the rune as harm done, naming anguish, torture and a giant hostile to households. What is sharp is not selective about whom it wounds.
