![]() ![]() Later on, as people moved about and the languages developed, the runic alphabet followed suit. The runic alphabet was most likely devised in southern Scandinavia, and that is where most of our earliest inscriptions are from. In the first and second century AD, the languages that formed the Germanic family were spoken across a wide area of northern and western Europe, including the countries we now know as Germany, the Low Countries, and Scandinavia, and some neighbouring regions. Rather, runes were devised to be carved, scratched or incised in a variety of materials, but particularly wood, bone, metal and stone. An important difference from classical alphabets at that time, which influenced the shapes of the runic characters, is that those who devised the alphabet did not anticipate its use on thin, flat writing surfaces such as papyrus or parchment. Rather than just borrow the Roman alphabet, and write their own language with it, the inventors of runes fashioned an alphabet more suited to the sounds of the Germanic languages. The runic alphabet was devised for the Germanic-speaking parts of Europe which had not previously used writing, but which had been exposed to contact with the Roman empire and had thus got the idea that writing could be a useful thing. Just as the word ‘alphabet’ is named after alpha and beta, the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, similarly, the ‘futhark’ is named after its first six characters (with the ‘th’ sound represented by just one character). The idea that the characters of the alphabet had a fixed order in what we call the ‘futhark’, is also derived from classical alphabets. The letters of this alphabet show clear influence from the Roman alphabet, in the form of some of the individual letters and in the size of the alphabet which originally consisted of 24 characters. Runes are the letters of an alphabet devised at some point in the first or second century AD. However, this alphabet, and the uses to which it was put, have a much wider chronological and geographical range than that, and are therefore of much broader interest. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.For many, runes and runic writing are indelibly associated with Vikings and the Viking Age. Ġerād and inġehyġd sind heom ġifeþu, and hīe þurfon tō ōþrum ōn fēore brōþorsċipes dōn.Īll human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Photo by Simon Ager, taken in the British Museum.Įall folc weorþaþ frēo and efne bē āre and rihtum ġeboren. The inscription is a riddle with the answer whale's bone, which is what the casket is made of.įrom the Franks Casket. The king of (?)terror became sad when he swam onto the grit. The fish beat up the sea(s) on to the mountainous cliff Notes and corrections provided by Nothelm Hurlebatteĭownload an chart of Anglo-Saxon runes (Excel speadsheet) The letter ger (ᛡ) is written ᛄ in manuscripts.The letter stan (ᛥ) only appears in once in Futhorc writings, and the letters cweorð (ᛢ) and ior (ᛡ) appear only in ABC lists.The vowel sound of eo (ᛇ) is uncertain, as is the pronunciation of cweorð (ᛢ).It is possibly that this alphabet was developed in Frisia and then adopted in England, or that it developed in England and then spread to Frisia.įrom the 7th century the Latin alphabet began to replace these runes, though some runes continued to appear in Latin texts representing whole words, and the Latin alphabet was extended with the runic letters þorn and wynn. They were used in England until the 10th or 11th centuries, though after the 9th century they were mainly used in manuscripts and were of interest to antiquarians, and their use ceased after the Norman conquest in 1066. It is thought that they were used to write Old English / Anglo-Saxon and Old Frisian from about the 5th century AD. Anglo-Saxon runes are an extended version of Elder Futhark consisting of between 26 and 33 letters. ![]()
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