Rune comes from the word runo, meaning letter and mystery. Early Germanic systems were runic alphabets. Although the runes—often made by sticks, carved onto stone, wood, bone and metal—represented letters, they were ideographic or pictographic symbols of some cosmological principle or power. To use the runic language meant invoking the force for which it stood. For example the Týr rune is the Norse god of war, portrayed as a one-handed warrior. Týr’s symbol is the sword. Once