This article from Ancient Origins on the Futhark, the ancient runic
alphabet of the Germanic tribes, is extremely detailed and interesting. Anyone
with a professed interest in medieval
Vikings will glean much from this informative article. (Ed.)
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Featured image: Detail of the runic inscription found on one of the copies of the golden horns of Gallehus housed at the Moesgaard Museum. Wikimedia Commons |
18 JUNE, 2015
- 03:22 BRYAN HILL
The word rune comes
from the Norse rún which means mystery or secret.
Little is known about the origins of the Runic alphabet and no one knows
exactly when, where or who invented it.
Runes are the
characters of the earliest written alphabet used by the Germanic peoples of
Europe called Futhark. The runic alphabet was used within Germanic languages
but primarily in Nordic countries. Inscriptions have been found
throughout northern Europe from the Balkans to Germany, Scandinavia, the
British Isles and Iceland, and were in use from about 100 to 1600 AD. Runic
inscriptions have even been found in North America, supporting claims that the
Vikings arrived in the Americas long before Columbus. These days English and
other Northern European languages are written using Latin letters, but they
used to be written using “Runestaves.”
The oldest
known runic inscription dates to 160 AD and is found on the Vimose Comb reading
simply “HARJA”.
More than
4,000 runic inscriptions and several runic manuscripts have been found with
approximately 2,500 of these coming from Sweden. Many date from the 800's
to the 1000's, during the period of the Vikings. Runic texts are found on
hard surfaces such as rock, wood, and metal. The characters were also scratched
on coins, jewelry, monuments, and slabs of stone.
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A comb made of antler from around 150 to 200 CE and was found in Vimose on the island of Funen, Denmark. The Elder Futhark inscription reads "Harja", a male name. This is the oldest known runic inscription. The comb is housed at the National Museum of Denmark. Wikimedia Commons
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This runic inscription has been carved into bone. Found in Sweden. Wikimedia Commons |
Futhark origins
Because of
the resemblance to Mediterranean writing, it is thought that Futhark was
adapted from either the Greek or Etruscan alphabet and its origin begins
further back than the pre-history of Northern Europe. The earliest Futhark
inscriptions don’t have a fixed writing direction, but instead were written
left-to-right or right-to-left, which was a feature of very archaic Greek or
Etruscan alphabets before the third century BC. One theory is that the runic
alphabet was developed by the Goths, a Germanic people. Two inscriptions,
the Negau and the Maria Saalerberg inscriptions, written in Etruscan script in
a Germanic language and dating from the second and first centuries BC, give
credence to the theory of Etruscan origins.
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A sample of Etruscan text carved into the Cippus Perusinus - a stone tablet discovered on the hill of San Marco, Italy, in 1822. Circa third/second century BC. Wikimedia Commons |
Elder Futhark – the oldest runic script
Elder Futhark
is thought to be the oldest version of the runic script, and was used in the
parts of Europe that were home to Germanic peoples, including
Scandinavia. It consisted of 24 letters, and was used mostly before the
ninth century AD. This was the ancestor language of English, Dutch, German,
Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Icelandic. As languages changed and more
Germanic groups adopted it, Futhark changed to suit the language that it came
to write. An early offshoot of Futhark was employed by Goths known as Gothic
Runes, which was used until 500 AD before it was replaced by the Greek-based
Gothic alphabet. Elder Futhark was used until 550 AD around the Baltic
and North Seas to write the language described by Antonson as ‘North-west
Germanic’. Unlike other forms of runes, the skill of reading Elder Futhark was
lost overtime until it was rediscovered with its decipherment in 1865 by the
Norwegian Sophus Bugge.
Younger Futhark or "Normal Runes"
evolved from Elder Futhark over a period of many years and stabilized by about
800 AD, the beginning of the Viking Age. Instead of 24 letters, the
Scandinavian "Younger" Futhark had 16, as nine of the original Elder
Futhark letters were dropped. The Younger Futhark is divided into two types,
short-twig (Swedish and Norwegian) and long-branch (Danish). It was the
main alphabet in Norway, Sweden and Denmark throughout the Viking Age, and
largely (though not completely) replaced by the Latin alphabet by about 1200
AD, which was a result of the conversion of most of Scandinavia to
Christianity. Futhark continued to be used in Scandinavia for centuries, but by
1600 AD, it had become little more than a curiosity among scholars.
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Description of the Younger Futhark as "Viking Ogham" in the Book of Ballymote (AD 1390). Public Domain |
Between 400
and 600 AD, three Germanic tribes, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes,
invaded Britain and brought Futhark from continental Europe with them. They
modified it into the 33-letter "Futhorc" to accommodate sound changes
that were occurring in Old English, the language spoken by the Anglo-Saxons.
The name "Futhorc" is evidence to a phonological change where the
long /a/ vowel in Old English evolved into a later /o/ vowel. Even though
Futhark thrived as a writing system, it started to decline with the spread of
the Latin alphabet. In England, Anglo-Saxon Futhorc began to be replaced by
Latin by the ninth century AD, and did not survive much more past the Norman
Conquest of 1066. By the 1000's, missionaries had converted the Germanic
peoples to Christianity.
A secret religious formula?
As runes date
from before the time Northern Europe became Christianized, they have become
associated with the "pagan" or non-Christian past, and thus a
mystique has been cast upon the alphabet. The many meanings of the word have
led to a number of theories linking the origin of the runic alphabet to cultic
use. When the missionary bishop Wulfila translated the Bible from Greek into
Visigothic in the fourth century, he translated the word mysterion toruna.
One theory, therefore, is that the oldest Proto-Norse or Proto-Germanic
meanings of the word may have been “religious mystery” or “secret religious
formula.”
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Codex runicus, a vellum manuscript from c. 1300 containing one of the oldest and best preserved texts of the Scanian law (Skånske lov), written entirely in runes. Public Domain
In popular
culture, runes have been seen as possessing mystical or magical
properties. Historical and fictional, runes appear commonly in modern
popular culture, particularly in fantasy literature, video games and various
other forms of media. Many modern Wiccan sects use Runes ceremonially and
ritualistically.
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The ‘secret’
of the runes continues to captivate us today.
References
"The
Origins of the Runes." Norse Mythology for Smart People. [Online]
Available here.
"Runes." Norse
Mythology for Smart People. [Online] Available at: http://norse-mythology.org/runes/
"The
Runic Alphabet – Futhark." ThorNews. March 2, 2013. [Online]
Available at: http://thornews.com/2013/03/02/the-runic-alphabet-futhark/
"Use of
Runes Survived Introduction of Christianity." ThorNews. February 5,
2015. [Online] Available here.
"Ancient
Scripts: Futhark." Ancient Scripts: Futhark. [Online] Available
at: http://www.ancientscripts.com/futhark.html
"Runic
Alphabet." Omniglot. [Online] Available at: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/runic.htm