Runic alphabet

Runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using letters known as runes that were formerly used to write Germanic languages, mainly in Scandinavia, Iceland, and the British Isles. The earliest runic inscriptions date from circa 200, and runic alphabets were used continuously for the next fourteen hundred years, last being attested as used in 17th century rural Sweden. The three best known runic alphabets are the elder futhark, the younger futhark, and the Anglo-Saxon futhorc. The most likely candidate for the origins of runic scripts are 5th to 1st century BC alphabets from northern Italy, descended from Etruscan and used for various Celtic languages in the region. The elder futhark (named after the initial phoneme of the first seven rune names in the following list, which are in bold font) consists of twenty four runes, often arranged in three rows of eight. The first row consists of fehu, urûz, Þurisaz (thurisaz), ansuz, raidô, kaunan, gebô, and wunjô. The second row consists of haglaz, naudiz, îsaz, jera, îwaz, perÞô, algiz, and sôwilô. The third row consists of tîwaz, berkanan, ehwaz, mannaz, laukaz, ingwaz, dagaz, and finally ôÞalan. The name of each rune is a meaningful word in Proto-Germanic, chosen to represent the sounds of the rune itself. Fehu, for example, means cattle. Most rune names stood for their rune because of the first phoneme in the name, with a few exceptions. Algiz, elk, for example, was used because the last "z" sound in the word (believed to be similar to the ř sound known to English speakers from the name of the famous composer Dvořák) was the sound of the rune, which sound was never used in a word-initial position. No distinction is made in surviving runic inscriptions between long and short vowels, although such a distinction was certainly present in the spoken languages of the time. As Proto-Germanic evolved into its later language groups, the words assigned to the runes and the sounds represented by the runes themselves began to diverge somewhat, and each culture would either create new runes, rename or rearrange its rune names slightly or even stop using obsolete runes completely to accomodate those changes. Thus, the Anglo-Saxons had several specialty runes to represent diphthongs unique to (or at least prevalent in) their dialect. Scholars also therefore believe that the reason the younger futhark used by the Vikings usually has sixteen runes, while the elder futhark used by much earlier Germanic tribes in contact with the Roman Empire is usually described as having twenty four, is that the reduction dramatically reflects six hundred years of sound changes in the North Germanic language group. Runes have been been used for divination in modern times, based on often symbolic interpretations of these names. If one drew fehu from a bag of runes, for example, it might be interpreted as meaning that one was destined to encounter not a herd of cattle, but rather money (mobile wealth). Although Norse literature is full of references to runes, it nowhere contains specific instruction on divination or magic. The only ancient source on divination is a rather vague description of runic divination in Tacitus' Germania, which describes "signs" chosen in groups of three, and may not even refer to runes at all. This has not stopped modern authors from extrapolating from what little specifics exist into entire systems of divination. Perhaps the most popular rune author is Ralph Blum, whose Book of Runes comes with a set of runes on ceramic tiles which is loosely based on the runes of the elder futhark. Another author is Edred Thorsson, whose best known books are Futhark, Runelore, and Runecasters's Handbook (The Well of the Wyrd). The Havamal describes the god Odin receiving runes by hanging himself as a self-sacrifice:

I hung on that windy tree for nine nights wounded by my own spear. \n:I hung to that tree, and no one knows where it is rooted. \n:None gave me food. None gave me drink. Into the abyss I stared \n:Until I spied the runes. I seized them up, and, howling, fell.