Elder Futhark


The Elder Futhark, also known as the Older Futhark, Old Futhark, or Germanic Futhark, is the oldest form of the runic alphabets. It was a writing system used by Germanic peoples in the Migration Period. Inscriptions are found on artifacts including jewelry, amulets, plateware, tools, and weapons, as well as runestones, from the 2nd to the 8th centuries.
In Scandinavia, beginning in the late 8th century, the script was simplified to the Younger Futhark, while the Anglo-Saxons and Frisians instead extended it, giving rise to the Anglo-Saxon futhorc. Both the Anglo-Saxon futhorc and the Younger Futhark remained in use during the Early and the High Middle Ages respectively, but knowledge of how to read the Elder Futhark was forgotten until 1865, when it was deciphered by Norwegian scholar Sophus Bugge.

Description

The Elder Futhark is named after the initial phoneme of the first six rune names: /f/, /u/, /ð/, /ɑ/, /r/, and /k/ corresponding with ᚠ, ᚢ, ᚦ, ᚨ, ᚱ, and ᚲ respectively. It has 24 runes, often arranged in three groups of eight runes; each group is in modern times called an ætt. What the groups were originally called remains unknown. In the following table, each rune is given with its common transliteration and phoneme:
The earliest known sequential listing of the alphabet dates to 400 AD and is found on the Kylver Stone in Gotland, and only partially inscribed but widely authenticated:
ᚢᚦᚨᚱᚲᚷᚺᚾᛁᛃᛈᛇᛉᛊᛏᛒᛖᛗᛚᛜᛞᛟ
uþarkghnijpïzstbemlŋdo

Two instances of another early inscription were found on the two Vadstena and Mariedamm bracteates, showing the division in three ætts, with the positions of ï, p and o, d inverted compared to the Kylver stone:

f u þ a r k g w; h n i j ï p z s; t b e m l ŋ o d

The Grumpan bracteate presents a listing from 500 which is identical to the one found on the previous bracteates but incomplete:

f u þ a r k g w... h n i j ï p ... t b e m l d

Origins

Derivation from Italic alphabets

The Elder Futhark runes are commonly believed to originate in the Old Italic scripts: either a North Italic variant, or the Latin alphabet itself. Derivation from the Greek alphabet via Gothic contact to Byzantine Greek culture was a popular theory in the 19th century, but has been ruled out since the dating of the Vimose inscriptions to the 2nd century. Conversely, the Greek-derived 4th-century Gothic alphabet does have two letters that may have been derived from runes, ? and ?.
The main problem is that a derivation from the classical Latin alphabet as used in the 1st and 2nd centuries, while the most obvious possibility suggested by the historical, geographical and cultural context, is not as straightforward as could be expected, especially regarding letter shapes, and many scholars are not satisfied by it. Instead, it is observed that many runic letters suspiciously resemble letters with similar sound values from alphabets used in the Alpine region in the last centuries BC, alphabets which are all derived from the northern Etruscan alphabet; however, again, there is no derivation so straightforward as to convince most scholars.
The angular shapes of the runes, presumably an adaptation to the incision in wood or metal, are not a Germanic innovation, but a property that is shared with other early alphabets, including the Old Italic ones. The 4th century BC Negau helmet B inscription features a Germanic name, Harigastiz, in a North Etruscan alphabet, and may be a testimony of the earliest contact of Germanic speakers with alphabetic writing. Similarly, the Meldorf inscription of 50 may qualify as "proto-runic" use of the Latin alphabet by Germanic speakers. The Rhaetic "alphabet of Bolzano" in particular seems to fit the letter shapes well. The spearhead of Kovel, dated to 200 AD, sometimes advanced as evidence of a peculiar Gothic variant of the runic alphabet, bears an inscription tilarids that may in fact be in an Old Italic rather than a runic alphabet, running right to left with a T and a D closer to the Latin or Etruscan than to the Bolzano or runic alphabets. Perhaps an "eclectic" approach can yield the best results for the explanation of the origin of the runes: most shapes of the letters can be accounted for when deriving them from several distinct North Italic writing systems: The p rune has a parallel in the Camunic alphabet, while it has been argued that d derives from the shape of the letter san in Lepontic where it seems to represent the sound /d/.
The g, a, f, i, t, m and l runes show no variation, and are generally accepted as identical to the Old Italic or Latin letters X, A, F, I, T, M and L, respectively. There is also wide agreement that the u, r, k, h, s, b and o runes respectively correspond directly to V, R, C, H, S, B and O.
The remaining ten runes of uncertain derivation may either be original innovations, or adaptions of otherwise unneeded Latin letters of the classical Latin alphabet. There are conflicting scholarly opinions regarding them:
  1. ᛖ may be from E.
  2. ᚾ may be from Raetic N.
  3. ᚦ may be from Latin D or from Raetic Θ.
  4. ᚹ may be from Q, from Latin P, or from Raetic W.
  5. ᛇ may be from Latin Z, from Latin Y, or from Raetic E.
  6. ᛉ may be from Raetic Z, from Latin Y, or from Etruscan ?.
  7. ᛜ may be from Latin Q.
  8. ᛃ may be from Latin G.
  9. ᛈ may be from Raetic P or may be an original Germanic innovation.
  10. ᛞ may be from Raetic D, from Lepontic san, or may be an original Germanic innovation.
Of the 24 runes in the classical futhark row attested from 400, ï, p and ŋ are unattested in the earliest inscriptions of c. 175 to 400, while e in this early period mostly takes a Π-shape, its M-shape gaining prevalence only from the 5th century. Similarly, the s rune may have either three or four strokes, and only from the 5th century does the variant with three strokes become prevalent.
The "mature" runes of the 6th to 8th centuries tend to have only three directions of strokes, the vertical and two diagonal directions. Early inscriptions also show horizontal strokes: these appear in the case of e, but also in t, l, ŋ and h.

Date and purpose of invention

The general agreement dates the creation of the first runic alphabet to roughly the 1st century. Early estimates include the 1st century, and late estimates push the date into the 2nd century. The question is one of estimating the "findless" period separating the script's creation from the Vimose finds of c. 160. If either ï or z indeed derive from Latin Y or respectively Z, as suggested by Odenstedt, the first century BC is ruled out, because these letters were only introduced into the Latin alphabet during the reign of Augustus.
Other scholars are content to assume a findless period of a few decades, pushing the date into the early 2nd century. Pedersen suggests a period of development of about a century to account for their assumed derivation of the shapes of þ ᚦ and j ᛃ from Latin D and G.
The invention of the script has been ascribed to a single person or a group of people who had come into contact with Roman culture, maybe as mercenaries in the Roman army, or as merchants. The script was clearly designed for epigraphic purposes, but opinions differ in stressing either magical, practical or simply playful aspects. concludes that in its earliest stage, the runic script was an "artificial, playful, not really needed imitation of the Roman script", much like the Germanic bracteates were directly influenced by Roman currency, a view that is accepted by in the light of the very primitive nature of the earliest inscription corpus.

Rune names

Each rune most probably had a name, chosen to represent the sound of the rune itself according to the principle of acrophony.
The Old English names of all 24 runes of the Elder Futhark, along with five names of runes unique to the Anglo-Saxon runes, are preserved in the Old English rune poem, compiled in the 7th century. These names are in good agreement with medieval Scandinavian records of the names of the 16 Younger Futhark runes, and to some extent also with those of the letters of the Gothic alphabet. Therefore, it is assumed that the names go back to the Elder Futhark period, at least to the 5th century. There is no positive evidence that the full row of 24 runes had been completed before the end of the 4th century, but it is likely that at least some runes had their name before that time.
This concerns primarily the runes used magically, especially the Teiwaz and Ansuz runes, which are taken to symbolize or invoke deities in sequences such as that on the Lindholm amulet.
Reconstructed names in Common Germanic can easily be given for most runes. Exceptions are the þ rune and the z rune. The 24 Elder Futhark runes are:
Each rune derived its sound from the first phoneme of the rune's respective name, with the exception of Ingwaz and Algiz: the Proto-Germanic z sound of the Algiz rune never occurred in a word-initial position. The phoneme acquired an r-like quality in Proto-Norse, usually transliterated with ʀ, and finally merged with r in Icelandic, rendering the rune superfluous as a letter. Similarly, the ng-sound of the Ingwaz rune does not occur word-initially.
The names come from the vocabulary of daily life and mythology, some trivial, some beneficent and some inauspicious:
  • Mythology: Tiwaz, Thurisaz, Ingwaz, God, Man, Sun.
  • Nature and environment: Sun, day, year, hail, ice, lake, water, birch, yew, pear, elk, aurochs.
  • Daily life and human condition: Man, need/constraint, wealth/cattle, horse, estate/inheritance, slag/protection from evil, ride/journey, year/harvest, gift, joy, need, ulcer/illness.