[Horza]

The Odal rune was one of the many symbols co-opted by the Nazi party of WWII Germany. Because of the symbol’s meaning of “nobility,” “superior race,” and “aristocracy,” it was used as the emblem of ethnic German military and Nazi organizations.

What’s distinct about these uses is that they often depicted the Odal rune with additional feet or wings below it.

In this variant, it was the emblem of:

• The 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen.
• The 23rd SS Volunteer Panzer Grenadier Division Nederland, which added an arrowhead at the “feet” of the rune.
• The Nazi-sponsored Independent State of Croatia.

It was also later used by the Neo-Nazi Wiking-Jugend in Germany, the Anglo-Afrikaner Bond, the Boeremag, the Blanke Bevrydingsbeweging in South Africa, the National Vanguard in the Neo-Fascist group in Italy, and others. Because of such unfortunate uses, the Odal rune is now often considered a hate symbol. It’s featured in the Strafgesetzbuch section 86a of the German criminal code as an outlawed symbol.