Birch & Growth
Berkano is the birch, the rune of new beginnings, fertility and protective care. It announces growth – a beginning, a healing, a sheltered becoming. Tend today, with patience and gentleness, what has tenderly begun, and it will thrive strongly.
‘Berkano/Bjarkan’ is the birch – the first tree to bud after winter. Rune of growth, fertility and new beginnings.
The Old Norse poem describes the birch as a greening branch, the smallest tree with the finest leaves. The Old English praises it as a beautiful, densely leaved tree.
The birch was an emblem of spring and of female, nourishing power. In clearings and on young ground it is often the first tree – a pioneer of new life.
Birch bark served as writing material in the North: even medieval runic and everyday letters have survived on it.