Ior is the sound io

Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem (from ragweedforge.com)

Ior is a river fish and yet it always feeds on land;
it has a fair abode encompassed by water, where it lives in happiness

The rune of this week is Ior, the river-fish. A creature who feeds on land and also lives in water. A life lived in two worlds.

It is a rune of boundaries, and mutability. As boundaries, it defines where one world begins and the other world ends. Property markers, fences, definition are all parts of understanding Ior. On the other hand, the markers, fences are themselves, both parts of either side, and yet also neither side. They are liminal items, and the experience of Ior is one of being a liminal being. Traditional liminal beings of human culture are the transgendered shamans, priests, girl boys, and boy girls, amazons and berdache, In Northern Europe the word often used is Ergi or Argr. They are equally applied to those engaged in religious and spiritual cross dressing, and even acts that cross those boundaries, like same sex orientation, or taking up the role and practices of the opposite sex. Before the modern day, traditional gender roles were often more well defined then current standards, as well as dress and behavior. But in many pre-christian and tribal cultures, they often had a spiritual functionary, and often frequent stories of people who would cross these roles. Even among the Gods, bi-gendered and dual sexual natures, cross dressing, gender shapeshifting, were often occurrences. Ior embodies this nature and takes part of that history. They are liminal beings, and so is Ior, crossing the boundaries that define things, and exisiting within it, as both and as neither. The third mind between self and other is both us and not-us; In, out and the threshold between the two.