Elder Futhark: Encyclopedia - Elder Futhark

Elder Futhark

The Elder Futhark (or Older Futhark, Old Futhark) are the oldest form of the runic alphabet, used by Germanic tribes for Proto-Norse and other Migration period Germanic dialects of the 2nd to 8th centuries for inscriptions on artefacts (jewellery, amulets, tools, weapons) and rune stones. In Scandinavia, the script was replaced by the Younger Futhark from the late 8th century, while the Anglo-Saxons replaced it with the Futhorc from the time of the invasion of England.

Elder Futhark - Origins

The Elder Futhark are commonly believed to originate in one of the Old Italic alphabets. Their angular shapes, 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 and Latin ones (compare, for example, the Duenos inscription). The 2nd century BC Negau helmet inscription features a Germanic name, Harigast, in a northern Etruscan alphabet, and may be a testimony of the earliest contact of Germanic speakers with alphabetic writing.

Elder Futhark - The alphabet

The Older Futhark (named after the initial phoneme of the first six rune names) consist of twenty-four runes, often arranged in three rows of eight. The earliest known full sequential listing of the alphabet dates to ca. 400 and is found on the Kylver Stone in Gotland. Another early inscription was found on the Vadstena bracteate. The 24 letters are divided in three groups or aett of eight each:

The common transliteration if these is:

þ corresponds to IPA [ θ ]. ï is also transcribed as ei, and may have been either a diphtong, or a vowel near [ ɪ ] or [ æ ]. z was Proto-Germanic [ z ], and evolved into Primitive Norse [ ɹ ], and is also transliterated as R. The remaining transliterations correspond to the IPA symbol of their approximate value.

Elder Futhark - Names

Each rune most probably had a name, chosen to represent the sounds of the rune itself. The names are, however, not directly attested for the Old Futhark themselves. Reconstructed names in Proto-Germanic have been suggested for them, based on the names given for runes of the later alphabets in the rune poems and the names of the letters of the Gothic alphabet.

• ᚠ fehu "wealth, cattle"
• ᚢ ûruz "aurochs" (or ûram "water / slag"?)
• ᚦ thurisaz "giant, ogre"
• ᚨ ansuz "one of the Aesir" (or ahsam "ear (of corn)"?)
• ᚱ raidô "ride, journey"
• ᚲ kaunan "ulcer, illness" (or kenaz, meaning "torch")
• ᚷ gebô "gift"
• ᚹ wunjô "joy"
• ᚺ haglaz "hail (precipitation)"
• ᚾ naudiz "need"
• ᛁ îsaz "ice"
• ᛃ jera "year"
• ᛇ îgwaz / "yew"
• ᛈ perþô "pear" (?)
• ᛉ algiz "elk" (?)
• ᛊ sôwilô "Sun"
• ᛏ tîwaz (a god)
• ᛒ berkanan "birch"
• ᛖ ehwaz "horse"
• ᛗ mannaz "man"
• ᛚ laukaz "lake"
• ᛜ ingwaz (a god), see Yngvi
• ᛞ dagaz "day"
• ᛟ ôþalan "estate, inheritance"

The rune names stood for their rune because of the first phoneme in the name (the principle of acrophony), 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 transcribed with R, 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.

Most names, in spite of being reconstructions, can be assumed with a fair degree of certainty for the Old Futhark because of the concurrence of Gothic, Anglo-Saxon and Nordic names. 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, ear (of corn).

• Daily life and human condition: Man, wealth/cattle, horse, estate/inheritance, slag, ride/journey, hail, year, gift, joy, need, ulcer/illness.

It has been argued that such a distribution of meanings support the use of the runes for purposes of divination. On the other hand, however, the NATO phonetic alphabet, although hardly ever used for divination, shows a similar distribution of inherited names (Charlie, Juliet), unremarkable basic vocabulary (Hotel, Uniform) and concepts very much in vogue at the time of its invention (Radar, X-Ray, Foxtrot, Tango). A similar acrophonic principle is found in the names of the Ogham letters given in the 14th century Auraicept na n-Éces.

Elder Futhark - Inscription corpus

Old Futhark inscriptions were found on artefacts scattered between the Carpathes and Lappland, with the highest concentration in Denmark. They are usually short inscriptions on jewellery (bracteates, fibulae, belt buckles), utensils (combs, spinning whorls) or weapons (lance tips, seaxes) and were mostly found in graves or bogs.

Elder Futhark - Scandinavian inscriptions

Words frequently appearing in inscriptions on bracteates with possibly magical significance are alu, laþu and laukaz. Their meaning is unclear, although alu has been associated with "ale, intoxicating drink", in a context of ritual drinking, and laukaz with "leek, garlic", in a context of fertility and growth. An example of a longer early inscription is on a 4th century axe-handle found in Nydam, Jutland: wagagastiz / alu:??hgusikijaz:aiþalataz (wagagaztiz "wave-guest" could be a personal name, the rest has been read as alu:wihgu sikijaz:aiþalataz with a putative meaning "wave/flame-guest, from a bog, alu, I, oath-sayer consecrate/fight". The obscurity even of emended readings is typical for runic inscriptions that go beyond simple personal names).

The oldest known runic inscription dates to ca. 160 AD and is found on a comb discovered in the bog of Vimose, Funen. The inscription reads harja, either a personal name or an epithet, c.f. Proto-Germanic *harjaz "warrior".

The typically Scandinavian rune stones begin to show the transition to Younger Futhark from the 7th century, with transitional examples like the Björketorp or Stentoften stones.

The longest known inscription in Older Futhark, and one of the youngest, consists of some 200 characters and is found on the early 8th century Eggjum stone, and may even contain a stanza of Old Norse poetry.

Elder Futhark - Continental inscriptions

The oldest inscriptions (before AD 500) found on the Continent are divided into two groups, the area of the North Sea coast and Northern Germany (including parts of the Netherlands) associated with the Saxons and Frisians on one hand (part of the "North Germanic Koine" (Martin 2004:173), and loosely scattered finds from along the Oder to south-eastern Poland, as far as the Carpathes, associated with East Germanic tribes. The latter group disappears during the 5th century, the time of contact of the Goths with the Roman Empire and their conversion to Christianity.

In this early period, there is no specifically West Germanic runic tradition. This changes from the early 6th century, and for about one century (520s to 620s), an Alamannic "runic province" (Martin 2004) emerges, with examples on fibulae, weapon parts and belt buckles. As in the East Germanic case, use of runes subsides with Christianization, in the case of the Alamanni in the course of the 7th century.

Elder Futhark - Distribution

There are some 350 known Elder Futhark inscriptions (Fischer 2004:281). Lüthi (2004:321) identifies a total of approx. 81 known inscriptions from the South (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) and approx. 267 from Scandinavia. The precise numbers are debatable because of some suspected forgeries, and some disputed inscriptions (identification as "runes" vs. accidental scratches or simple ornaments). 133 Scandinavian inscriptions are on bracteates (compared to 2 from the South), and 65 are on rune stones (no Southern example is extant). Southern inscriptions are predominantly on fibulae (43, compared to 15 in Scandinavia). The Scandinavian rune stones belong to the later period of the Elder Futhark, and initiate the boom of medieval Younger Futhark stones (with some 6,000 surviving examples).

Elder Futhark inscriptions were rare, with very few active literati, in relation to the total population, at any time, so that knowledge of the runes was probably an actual "secret" throughout the Migration period. Of 366 lances excavated at Illerup, only 2 bore inscriptions. A similar ratio is estimated for Alemannia, with an estimated 170 excavated graves to every inscription found (Lüthi 2004:323)

Estimates of the total number of inscriptions produced are based on the "minimal runological estimate" of 40,000 (ten individuals making ten inscriptions per year for four centuries). The actual number was probably considerably higher. The ca. 80 known Southern inscriptions are from some 100,000 known graves. With an estimated total of 50,000,000 graves (based on population density estimates), some 80,000 inscriptions would have been produced in total in the Merovingian South alone (and maybe close to 400,000 in total, so that of the order of 0.1% of the corpus has come down to us), and Fischer (2004:281) estimates a population of several hundred active literati throughout the period, with as many as 1,600 during the Alamannic "runic boom" of the 6th century.

See also

• Proto-Norse
• Runic alphabet
• Rune poem
• Rune stone
• Golden horns of Gallehus
• Gothic alphabet

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Elder Futhark", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki