Today, most runestones are painted with falu red, since the colour red makes it easy to discern the ornamentation, and it is appropriate since red paint was also used on runes during the Viking Age. In fact, one of the Old Norse words for "writing in runes" was "fá" and it originally meant "to paint" in Proto-Norse ("faihian"). Moreover, in "Hávamál", Odin says: "So do I write / and colour the runes" and in "Guðrúnarkviða II", Gudrun says "In the cup were runes of every kind / Written and reddened, I could not read them".