The Letters of the Futhark

The runes are the letters of the futhark alphabets used to write the Germanic languages from roughly the second century CE, and they survive in thousands of inscriptions across Scandinavia, the British Isles and continental Europe: on stones, weapons, jewellery and everyday objects. Each rune has a name preserved in later rune-poems, and stands for both a sound and the thing its name denotes.

The principal rows are the twenty-four-character Elder Futhark, the Anglo-Saxon futhorc that expanded it, and the sixteen-character Younger Futhark of the Viking Age. The entries treat the runes of these historical rows.