The Rings
These rings were made as companions to one another.
Both draw on early Scandinavian runic traditions from the Viking Age, when runes were used not only for writing but also for marking meaning, memory, and protection.
The designs are engraved using a modern tool – a laser – but the forms and ideas behind them are drawn from inscriptions that are over a thousand years old.
The Warding Ring
The inscription on the warding ring comes from a famous Viking Age monument known as the Glavendrup Runestone, raised in Denmark around the early 10th century.
The key line of the inscription reads:
“May Thor hallow these runes.”
In Old Norse belief, Thor was the protector of both people and the human world. His hammer was not only a weapon but also a consecrating tool, used to bless and safeguard things of importance.
On Viking Age stones this phrase was used to place the runes under Thor’s protection, making the inscription something set apart and guarded.
The ring carries that same idea in miniature.
The runes stand proud of the surface of the band while the metal around them is cut away, so the symbols themselves rise up from the ring. This was done deliberately so the runes feel like posts or staves of protection, rather than marks cut into the metal.
The ring is not meant as magic in the literal sense.
Instead it carries an old idea: that words and symbols can stand as signs of protection and resilience, marking something that is meant to endure.
The ORÐSTÍR Ring
The second ring carries the Old Norse word ORÐSTÍR.
The word appears in the Hávamál, a collection of wisdom verses preserved in Viking Age poetry.
One of the most well-known lines says:
“Cattle die,
kinsmen die,
we ourselves also die;
but the reputation of each dead man
never dies.”
Orðstír means reputation, honour, or the lasting memory of a person’s deeds.
It is the idea that what truly endures is not wealth or strength, but the mark a person leaves on the lives of others.
The ring therefore represents something different from the warding ring.
Where the first speaks of protection, this one speaks of legacy and character.
The runes are engraved into the band itself, like an inscription cut into stone, echoing the way Viking Age memorial stones preserved names and stories long after the people themselves were gone.
Together
These rings are meant to work as a pair.
One carries an ancient blessing of protection.
The other carries a reminder that a person’s worth is measured by the life they live and the memory they leave behind.
They combine two ideas that were important in the old Norse world:
protection in the present
and
honour that endures over time.
ᚦᚢᚱ ᚢᛁᚴᛁ ᚦᛁᛋᛁ ᚱᚢᚾᛅᛦ
(May Thor hallow these runes)
and
ᚢᚱᚦᛋᛏᛁᚱ
(ORÐSTÍR)
The Bind Rune
At the centre of the ORÐSTÍR ring is a bind rune formed from two traditional runes joined together on a single vertical stave.
The runes used are:
ᛏ (Týr) – associated with honour, resolve, and uprightness.
Týr was the god of law and courage, remembered for sacrificing his hand in order to bind the great wolf Fenrir. The rune therefore came to represent steadfast will and the courage to stand firm.
ᚢ (Úr) – associated with strength and endurance.
The rune originally referred to the auroch, a powerful wild cattle species known for its resilience and raw strength.
When these two runes share a single vertical spine they form a bind rune, a traditional way of combining meanings in runic writing.
Together they represent:
Strength held upright by will.
The central vertical stave acts as the spine of the symbol, suggesting stability and balance, while the supporting branch below represents strength that supports and sustains.
Placed between the repeated word ORÐSTÍR, the bind rune symbolises the person at the centre of their own reputation – strength and resolve standing within the name they carry.
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