ᛄ

Ger is a little small. Look at it so teeny: ᛄ. You might not be able to see. It’s bigger now, it grew over time, but the poor thing was only half sized once. Sometimes Ger is carved to look like the rune for Beaver, Ior, ᛡ, making for redundancy and a real identity crisis for sweet little ᛄ, though ᛄ did stand up a little taller to claim a space in manuscripts at least. ᛄ’s got other problems too. It once made a J sound before shifting into a softer palatal G and then ultimately a Y sound represented by Ge, where it seems to have landed, unfortunately sharing the same initial sound of the ᛡ rune as well as its look sometimes. This does lend to a bit of an identity crisis. ᛄ was here first, I’ll have you know, and it’s hard for a small rune like ᛄ to maintain an individual style when others are such copycats. This is all in addition to ᛄ’s name Ger being a homonym with Yr, ᚣ, the name for the rune for Bow. No wonder ᛄ feels so cowed.

Carve a thorn, Þ. Now make it look both ways like double faced Janus, god of beginnings and doorways, Janus the patron deity of the New Year who sees where we’ve been and most interestingly, where we are going.