Tiwaz
The One-Handed God
The Elder Futhark letter t, named for the god Týr: a sign that holds its course and keeps faith with princes.
The reconstructed name *tiwaz is among the better supported, preserved as Tir in Old English, Týr in Old Norse and tyz in the Gothic letter list copied at Vienna in the ninth century. The Old English rune poem describes a sign that holds its course above the mists of night and never fails, keeping faith well with princes, which reads more like a star than a god. The Norwegian and Icelandic poems name the god outright as the one-handed one, the Icelandic adding the leavings of the wolf: the myth Snorri Sturluson set down in the thirteenth century, in which Týr lays his hand in Fenrir's mouth as a pledge and loses it when the gods bind the wolf. Nazi organisations later took the shape as a badge, and far-right groups still use it.
Light
A fixed point. The poems give a light that holds its course through the dark, faith kept with princes, and a pledge honoured at the price of a hand rather than withdrawn.
Shadow
The same story is a maiming, and the pledge was never good: the gods bound the wolf under cover of a promise they had no intention of keeping, and the guarantor paid for it.
