Runes you will get - and staves to read,
-Hávamál, The Poetic Edda
Very great staves - very strong staves;
Staves that - the Greatest painted,
Staves that - the Mighty Powers made,
All carved by - the rune-wise God.
Runes you will get - and staves to read,
-Hávamál, The Poetic Edda
Very great staves - very strong staves;
Staves that - the Greatest painted,
Staves that - the Mighty Powers made,
All carved by - the rune-wise God.
But at the same time, runes were used in daily life, just like the letters of today, and carved on the most simple item, like a bowl or a knife. These item-carvings are often to show belongnity.
The knowledge of carving and reading runes were good and a majority of the people knew it well. Most inscriptions are unfortunately lost today, as they were made on material that doesn't last, like wood.
We have 5000 runic inscriptions left to count, and 3000 of these are runic stones.
A rune is a character in the futhark (RUNIC ALPHABET) used by the Teutons (THE PEOPLE WHO LIVED IN THE PRESENT GERMANY, THE NEATHERLANDS, SCANDINAVIA AND UK).
The word "rune" is very hard to translate today. When the Finnish took up the word long, long ago, it got the translation "song".
The German word "raunen" means "whisper".
The Samish peoples' drum were called "Runebomme" in Norrœna and also in present Norweigan. The word "runa" as a verb can mean both "conjure" and "tell fortunes" in Norweigan and in Swedish "tempt".
In the Edda poetry - the word sometimes means "carved signs" and sometimes "sacred wisdom and knowledge".
Some scientists think that the word originally ment "that which give sounds". But nobody knows!
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Our Latin alphabet is named after the first two letters in the Greec: Alpha and Betha. In this alphabet every letter has an own name, but these names have no meaning in itself.
A futhark is a runic alphabet, named after its first six letters, F-U-TH-A-R-K, where every letter's name starts with that sound. The difference between the Greec alphabet and the first futhark is that every rune has one or several meanings and is therefore magic!
Their names are: fehu - uruR - þurisaR - algiR - raiðo - kauna.
For a long time - Loddfafnir,
Have you been missing - these songs;
They will give you pleasure - and help,
Luck if you take them - joy if you learn them.-Hávamál, The Poetic Edda
The oldest information - Tacitus
This could be called a proof for the magical powers the runes possesed, according to its people.
The Roman history writer Tacitus wrote in the year 100 AD a book called GERMANIA which descibed and pictured the Germanic peoples' traditions and customs. In chapter 10, he tells how the German people divided a little branch from a fruit-tree into small staves, which each were marked with different characters (RUNES?) and which were then spread on a white sheet.
Then a sacred man or the head of the family (FATHER) read the signs, which were formed by accident, at the same time he prayed to his Gods with his eyes to the heaven, three times for every stave he wanted to interpret, which he did with help from the pattern and the sign on every stave that formed a pattern.
We do not know if this were runes, and we do not have any findings from before the year 175 AD, but nothing in reality prevents the existence of runes long before Tacitus wrote his book.
It does sound quite truthful that it actually were runes, signs carved on little staves and can read in later Nordic Sagas, about a popular game, to throw runes...
In another chapter of this book, Tacitus says that the Germanic people doesn't have a writing system, and that would mean the above weren't runes, or that runes first had a magical meaning, and later people realized that they could be used for much more than tell fortunes.
The middle of the 500's - Verantius Fortunatus
This is another written information on the useage of runes.
The Bishop in Pointiers - Verantius Fortunatus is corresponding with a friend, and this person is too lazy in answering his letters, Verantius get tired and writes a kind of an angry letter telling his friend:
If you are tired of these Roman letters, why not try the Persian letters, the Hebreic letters, the Greec letters or why not let the rune of the Barbarians be painted into a table of ash tree - for what Papyrus can do - a flat wood piece can do as well.
The runes are here told about as, if though scornful, but still a perfectly fine corresponding system - ready to be compared to both the Roman, the Persian, the Hebreic and the Greec letters.
The 800's - Hrabanus Maurus
Hrabanus Maurus was the abbot in Fulda and from him is an information from the 800's. He tells about the Heathen people living outside the Francic Kingdom, also called the Northmen, and who have letters with which they write down all of their songs, stories, cursings and told fortunes.
The 900's - Ibn Jakub el Nedim
This Arab author says that the Ruses (ARABIAN NAME OF NORTHMEN) had their own writing which were carved in wood.
,,,, and . - which look like the letters for P - M - X, but is here representing the sounds: w - e - g.
I did not get to enjoy - the mead of any horn,
-Hávamál, the Poetic Edda.
I know that I hung - in a wind-swept tree
For nine night - of time;
Harmed by a spear's edge - given to Odin,
me for myself.
Neither any bread - I spied deep down;
Runes I took up - with shrieks,
Then I fell down - from that gallows-tree.
Tormented in pains, starving and thirsty, he saw visions in which sacred wisdom, called the runes, showed themselves to him.
It was not only people in the former days that thought of the runes as something extraordinary. This is what Sweden's last Catholic bishop, Johannes Magnus writes in his book HISTORIA DE OMNIBUS GOTHORUM SVEANUMQUE REGIBUS, which was about all the Gothic and Swedish King's history and which was printed in Rome 1554:
The Gothic have their letters and texts much earlier than the Latin were invented, which is proven to us by the great stones, which are raised at the Gothics' old sacred grounds and graves. On these stones, letters have been cut from which we easily can understand, that they were raised by great heroes, antidiluvian or right after.
Rune carving have been found in the following countries:
Germany, Poland, Ucraina, Hungary, Romania, Bosnia, France and the United Kingdom.
But the useage of runes didn't survive for long in "big" Europe, only for a few hundred years. In Scandinavia, it survived for more than 2000, despite the faithful Christians attempts to convert the cold people of the Great North.
;-)
There are about 5000 remained runic carving for us to enjoy today - of which 3000 are runic stones. This does not mean runic stone were more popular than other materials, it simply means says that stone last longer than for example wood and that big stones are hard to destroy or remove.
Of these 3000 stones are 2500 from Sweden, and only were are few are found in the other Nordic countries, 250 in Denmark and only about 100 in Norway for example. Then some are found in the United Kingdom, and a very small number can be found in places like the Fareoes, Isle of Man, Greenland and southern Russia - places were Vikings had once lived!
Note, the runes wasn't known by all people, they were divined and had sacred powers, therefore: nothing for beginners to play with! A good example of that can be found in Völuspá, a section in the Poetic Edda. It says that a fool shall be silent when others are discussing runes:
It is well known - that if you ask about runes,
-Hávamál, The Poetic Edda
Which origins from - the prevailing powers;
Carved in - the Mighty ones council,
Painted in red - by the foremost wise man,
Then you better - remain silent.
Runic carving was not only a magic proffesion -but it was also a form of art.
The runes "main-period" of useage in Scandinavia lasted for about 1 200 years, until the 1200's.
When Christianity eventually conquered Sweden, it brought us the Latin alphabet as it is today, but the Swedes kept lingering on to the old runes side by side with the new writing.
One major reason to this was that the Latin letters were written down inside, with a feather with ink, on a piece of paper. Runes were cut whereever, with just a bit wood and a knife, what every man had or easily could get. And wood is harder to destroy than paper and resists rain.
In the Medieval age, it was only educated people that knew the Latin form of writing, while the rest of the people used runes.
There is a writing in a church on Öland, an island outside the east coast of Sweden, which is from the 1500's:
That should the reverend know,This means that even the wise men should know how to communicate with the people in their way.
how to read and write runes.
Lead me, Jesus,That is all we can read, the rest is destroyed. It is originally in Swedish, and it is supposed to rime, this is only translated literal.
here in life
to my rightful
wandering goal.
When I tired steps
have taken
and no more
wander can take,
become, oh Jesus,
then my peace,
when me all..
AAD gät 1900which means: Anna Andersdotter tended cattle the year 1900, and it was found inside another little shed and it was only the letters "g" and "t" which were carved using runes.
Rumors want to let us know that there still were people alive in 1905 that could read and write runes in the north of Sweden.
, and the three ätts are called:
The futhark had a very strict order, and each rune had it's special placement. According to this order, the rune carvers in the old days worked out a special rune-chiffer, called the clandestine-text. By using clandestine-tunes in the text, they gave it double meaning.
This has caused a lot of headache for modern rune-scientists!
These oldest runes are mostly found on archifacts, and only a few on stones. In Sweden there is about 50 inscriptions using this futhark. Most of them are very hard to read and some are still a mystery and will be in the future too...
It is from this first futhark and findings that we can tell that the language was almost the same in the entire of Scandinavia, this first Nordic is called Norrœna, or in English: Old Norse.
The Viking Age starts around 800 AD and suddenly, the futhark goes through major changes and at the same time, the different Scandinavian languages starts to split up into what they are today. It was almost only Iceland that kept Norrœna and didn't change much. Maybe because they were isolated up there in the North Atlantic...
The futhark was reduced from 24 to only 16 characters and took three different appaerences: normal runes, short hand runes and staveless runes.
Normal runes is the most common one. It was used on runic stones and other purposes of high importance. Almost all of the 2500 Swedish rune stones are made with these.
Short hand runes is a simplified version of the normal runes, used for quick notes and such. They have a different appaerence - their bi-staves are shorter. In Sweden we have about 30 inscriptions made with short hand runes.
Staveless runes are even further simplified than the short hand runes. These lacks the main-stave completely and have only kept the bi-staves of the rune, today we only know of about 10 inscriptions.
It might seem odd for us that are used to 26-28 letters, that a people reduces their alphabet from 24 to 16 letters instead of making up new ones. Every language on this planet consists of 40 different sounds, so the wisest would of course be to have 40 letters, one for each sound, and not needing "digraphs" - when two or more letters are used to form one sound, like the English word "thought" which consists of seven letters but only three sounds. If English would have had the Swedish and Icelandic letters, it would have been possible to write it with three letters and would have looked like this: þåt.
Never mind, my point was that when Christianity arrives to Scandinavia 200 years later, the people made a new futhark along with the 16-characters futharks. They used their normal 16-character futhark and used little dots, for dividing for example an "e" from an "i".
This gave a "new" futhark consisting 26 characters as the Latin alphabet. This futhark is called "the stung futhark" - and is made by the 16 normal runes and then 10 have dots, to represent other sounds.
Some examples:
) with a dot became e (
).
) with a dot became g (
).
) with a dot became y (
).
) with a dot became d (
).
) with a dot became p (
).
The picture beneath shows the lid to a little box called Frank's box after a late owner. It is made from wale-bone and probably made in Northumberland around the year 700. It has two pictures, the one to the right is showing the three wise men, Mary and Jesus - while the other picture comes from a scen in the Myth about the smith Volund, which belongs to the Æsir cult.
The text have not yet been completely translated. The runes are not Nordic, but Anglo-Saxon.
As this is a site about the Æsir cult and Northern mythology, I won't talk more about the Anglo-Saxon (ENGLISH) futhark here, but you can read some about it and see the runes if you click here!
When the Scandinavian languages divided in the 800's, and left Norrœna to history, Iceland kept it almost unchanged until today. I say almost, because it is now considered a "dead" language and would be impossible to bring to life as it lacks too many modern words.
If you are interested in this, our ancestral mother-tongue, take a look at Rob's Old Norse page!
He will explain it further and he is in charge of this Old Norse webring:
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