Elder Futhark runes

About elder Futhark runes

The Elder Futhark is the oldest runic alphabet: 24 runes, named futhark (said foo-thark, Dictionary.com gives) after its first six letters, f, u, þ, a, r and k. Store norske leksikon dates its use from about 100 to 700 AD, and the oldest certain runic inscription, on a comb from Vimose on Funen in Denmark, to about 160. The Kylver stone from Gotland, a grave slab of the 400s, carries the whole row. At the start of the Viking Age, in the 700s, the runic script changed and the Younger Futhark of 16 runes came into use, so the alphabet on these pages is older than the Vikings.

Each page takes one rune, from Fehu and Uruz to Dagaz and Othala: its sound, its name and what the name meant, and what the Old English, Norwegian and Icelandic rune poems say about it.

Why every rune has a name

The Danish encyclopedia Lex explains that the runes had names taken from everyday words, each beginning with the rune’s own sound, probably as an aid to memory: the f-rune was *fehu, cattle and wealth, and the u-rune *ūruz, the aurochs. Lists of rune names survive in English and Continental manuscripts going back to the 800s. The oldest forms of the names, the ones given here for the Elder Futhark, are scholars’ reconstructions. Lex adds that no one has yet found a pattern in the choice of names or an explanation for the order of the runes.

Three rune poems

Much of what the names meant comes from three medieval poems with a verse for each rune, edited together by Bruce Dickins in 1915: an Old English poem, and Norwegian and Icelandic poems on the 16 runes of the later alphabet. They do not always agree. The rune that the English poem calls the aurochs, the Icelandic poem calls a shower of rain.

Three groups of eight

The 24 runes fall into three groups, called ætter; Store norske leksikon notes that the word may once have meant “groups of eight”. The groups are marked by dividers on the Vadstena and Grumpan bracteates from Sweden.

Were runes magic?

The sagas say they were, but the inscriptions mostly do not. Lex notes that the earliest inscriptions use runes as ordinary letters in ordinary language, which does not suggest the script was made for cult or magic. The National Museum of Denmark goes further: runic magic “seems more of a Medieval and Early Modern invention than a Viking-Age fact”.

Were runes used to tell the future?

The sagas say so. According to them, the National Museum of Denmark notes, runic inscriptions could predict the future, protect a person against misfortune or carry curses and spells, and late medieval folk songs mention rune casting as a way to win a girl’s love. Most inscriptions that have been found, the museum adds, carry more down-to-earth messages. The Roman historian Tacitus, in his Germania, describes Germanic divination by lots: slips cut from the twig of a fruit tree, marked, thrown on a white cloth and read by a priest or the father of a family. He does not say what the marks were.

Runes today

Runes never quite stopped being written, Lex says: scholars were collecting them in the 1500s while a few people could still use them. Many people today use runes to mark a tie to the past, often in tattoos, and the National Museum of Denmark receives about fifty requests a year from people who want a tattoo in runes.