Thurisaz Totally Explained

Everything about Thurisaz totally explained

The rune is called Thurs (Þurs "giant", see Jötunn) in the Icelandic and Norwegian rune poems:

Old Norwegian	English translation
Þurs vældr kvinna kvillu, kátr værðr fár af illu.	Thurs ("Giant") causes anguish to women, misfortune makes few men cheerful.
Old Icelandic
Þurs er kvenna kvöl ok kletta búi ok varðrúnar verr. Saturnus þengill.	Thurs ("Giant") is torture of women and cliff-dweller and husband of a giantess Saturn's thegn.

Thurisaz, pronounced "Thoo-ree-saz" can be afford many meanings in addition to it's common interpretation for "giant". Thurs can be taken as both a symbol for frost, the end of a run of good luck, winter and in some readings, chaos. In any manner, it's never a friendly omen.
By extension, it was also associated with the giant-killer Thor and his hammer Mjollnir. To a lesser extent in it's aspect of bringing misfortune, it has also been linked to the Lord of Mischief, Loki. (External Link

) Note, however, that name of the god (Þōrr) has no etymological connection with the word for giant (þurs), being related instead to Þunor (thunder).
In Anglo-Saxon England, the same rune was called Thorn or "Þorn" and it survives as the letter Þ (þ). Since "thorn" is also not obviously etymologically related to "thurs", an attempt has been made to account for the substitution of names by taking "thorn" to be a kenning (metaphor) for "giant".(External Link

) It is disputed as to whether a distinct system of Gothic runes ever existed, but it's clear that most of the names of the letters of the Gothic alphabet correspond to those of the Elder Futhark. In modern transliterations of Gothic texts, the relatively newer thorn character is substituted for the Gothic letter, although neither the thorn glyph or name were used in Gothic. The glyphs of the Gothic alphabet don't follow the runes for the most part, the earlier runic being replaced by, called þiuþ "(the) good" in the Codex Vindobonensis 795.
The lack of agreement between the various glyphs and their names in Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, and Old Norse makes it difficult to reconstruct the Elder Futhark rune's Proto-Germanic name. Assuming that the Scandanavian name <þurs> is the most plausible reflex of the Elder Futhark name, and comparing that with the OE <þyrs> "giant, ogre" and the OHG

"(of the) giant", the Proto-Germanic form *þurisaz has been reconstructed.

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