Origin The earliest form of the runic alphabet, in use across Germanic speaking Europe from around the second to the eighth century CE.
The Elder Futhark is the oldest runic alphabet, twenty four characters used across Germanic speaking Europe from about the second century to the eighth, and named for the sound values of its first six letters. Its inscriptions are short and cut into metal, bone, wood and stone rather than written with ink, and the tradition divides the row into three groups of eight called aettir. It is the row behind the rune names this atlas records, and both the sixteen character Younger Futhark of Scandinavia and the Anglo-Saxon futhorc developed out of it. The meanings modern rune books give the individual characters come from later rune poems and from the names themselves, not from the inscriptions.
Facts
Origins
Origin PeriodThe earliest form of the runic alphabet, in use across Germanic speaking Europe from around the second to the eighth century CE. 2 Place of OriginGermanic speaking Europe, attested in inscriptions from Scandinavia to continental Europe. 2 Learn More
Cut Rather Than Written
The shapes are determined by the tool and the material. Runes are made of vertical strokes and diagonals with very few curves and almost no horizontals, because a horizontal cut along a piece of wood follows the grain and disappears while a diagonal crosses it and stays visible. That constraint is visible in every character in the row and it explains forms that look arbitrary on a printed page.
The surviving corpus reflects the same practical world. Inscriptions are short, usually a name, a statement that someone made or owns the object, or a single word, and they appear on brooches, weapons, combs, stones and the thin gold discs known as bracteates. Continuous text of any length is absent. The earliest generally accepted find, a comb from a bog deposit in Denmark, carries one word and dates from around the second century. That shortness has consequences for interpretation. Many inscriptions cannot be translated with any confidence, some appear to be alphabet exercises or simple repetitions of the row itself, and a number consist of formulaic words with no ordinary meaning that recur across objects and regions. Anyone reading a confident narrative about what the runes were for should notice how little the objects themselves actually say, and how much of the surrounding literature is inference from much later written sources rather than from the inscriptions.
Where the Rune Meanings Actually Come From
The names attached to the characters, and the meanings built on them, do not come from the inscriptions. They are reconstructed from three medieval rune poems, one Old English and two Scandinavian, which give each character a name and a short verse, and from a manuscript list of Gothic letter names. Those sources are centuries later than the row's period of use and disagree with each other, so a reconstructed name is a scholarly inference and its meaning is an inference on top of that. The divinatory use of runes as commonly practised today is more recent still.
Systems of drawing marked tokens and reading them by keyword were developed in the twentieth century, and the widely sold handbook that established the modern format dates from the 1980s. There is one ancient report of lot casting among Germanic peoples, in which marked slips cut from a branch are scattered on a white cloth and drawn while looking upward. It does not mention runes, does not describe an alphabet, and cannot be used to attest the practice it is usually cited for. The atlas records the historical script and the modern divinatory system as two different subjects, connected by the second having taken its material from the first.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Anglo-Saxons directly: "The Elder Futhark is the oldest runic alphabet, twenty four characters used across Germanic speaking Europe from about the second century to the eighth, and named for the sound values of its first..."
The Elder Futhark reached Anglo-Saxon Britain with Germanic settlers before it developed locally into the Futhorc.
This source names Europe directly: "used across Germanic speaking Europe from about the second century to the eighth, and named for the sound values of its first six letters."
This source names Saxons directly: "The Elder Futhark is the oldest runic alphabet, twenty four characters used across Germanic speaking Europe from about the second century to the eighth, and named for the sound values of its first..."
Contains
Algiz, Runes One of the twenty four characters of the Elder Futhark.
Ansuz, Runes One of the twenty four characters of the Elder Futhark.
Berkano, Runes One of the twenty four characters of the Elder Futhark.
Dagaz, Runes One of the twenty four characters of the Elder Futhark.
Ehwaz, Runes One of the twenty four characters of the Elder Futhark.
Eihwaz, Runes One of the twenty four characters of the Elder Futhark.
Fehu, Runes One of the twenty four characters of the Elder Futhark.
One of the three groups of eight the row is divided into.
Gebo, Runes One of the twenty four characters of the Elder Futhark.
Hagalaz, Runes One of the twenty four characters of the Elder Futhark.
One of the three groups of eight the row is divided into.
Ingwaz, Runes One of the twenty four characters of the Elder Futhark.
One of the twenty four characters of the Elder Futhark.
Jera, Runes One of the twenty four characters of the Elder Futhark.
Kenaz, Runes One of the twenty four characters of the Elder Futhark.
Laguz, Runes One of the twenty four characters of the Elder Futhark.
Mannaz, Runes One of the twenty four characters of the Elder Futhark.
Nauthiz, Runes One of the twenty four characters of the Elder Futhark.
Othala, Runes One of the twenty four characters of the Elder Futhark.
Perthro, Runes One of the twenty four characters of the Elder Futhark.
Raidho, Runes One of the twenty four characters of the Elder Futhark.
Sowilo, Runes One of the twenty four characters of the Elder Futhark.
One of the twenty four characters of the Elder Futhark.
Tiwaz, Runes One of the twenty four characters of the Elder Futhark.
One of the three groups of eight the row is divided into.
Uruz, Runes One of the twenty four characters of the Elder Futhark.
Wunjo, Runes One of the twenty four characters of the Elder Futhark.
Derived from This
The Futhorc is the Elder Futhark's twenty four characters expanded as Old English and Frisian gained sounds the older row could not write.
The sixteen character row is a reduction of the twenty four character one, made in Scandinavia in the eighth and ninth centuries.
Sources
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