transcribing

The pieces I chose are all examples of the older futhark, I found these pieces in the back of the book  Looijenga, Tineke. Texts and contexts of the oldest runic inscriptions. Leiden, NLD. Brill academic publishers, 2003.

phonetic translation: tllhdlomal

phonetic translation: ltezugal

phonetic translation: edital     osthin

this plate of metal appears to have been broken out of shape, this might have been done before it was tossed into a lake or bog, as sacrifice, tribute, or some way to insure that it could not be used in the after life by the spirits of the defeated enemies. It is unclear if these runes were in place originally, or if these runes were added before they were “sacrificed”

phoetic translation:

izthntbn

zwel dw

ernmnlnu

n rungygugeu

fglghgzh?d

idzruoro

this piece posed a particular challenge, there is a recurring ‘astrix’ sign that I could find no translation for, it shows up more often then any other runes which makes me think it might have been used as a word divider, it also resembles the rune for g, which is an X and it is possible that this inscription decided to add an additional line through the middle from top to bottom, but I am still very unsure of its usage.

phonetic translation: lathuadeaeliiu    all

this is a great example of a ‘bracteate’

phonetic translation: dedagadmaaaa

this particular bracteates was difficult to figure out, I was unsure of what direction to read it in, because left to right showed all the runes upside down, I decided on right to left. This particular piece shows possible cultural borrowings from rome, the soldier with the military cap looks particularly roman in style (the individual seems to have a beard, but he is wearing a roman styled helmet) and under that we see an animal, probably a wolf, feeding two human babies, most likely in reference to remus and Romulus.

phonetic translation: zkfiiz?igimhljffusi

the craftsmen who inscribed the pommel of this sword let his runes match the shape of the pommel. Most of the runes maintain a legible shape, but they change a great deal depending in the where they are located, this lack of standardization is the bane of runologists, and this particular piece gave me a head ache. The extremely small runes are hard to distinguish, and some of the tall runes are equally distorted.

phonetic translation: inu?z?g

partly because of the stylization that the craftsmen chose for this particular piece, the runes were shaped differently than most other pieces.

phonetic translation: uth?drdwugngz

Most examples of runes that archaeologists have to learn from are scratched into things, as can be seen here, this often looks more like bathroom graffiti then something written by an educated scholar. This is because of a lack of standardization, and a culture that didn’t put high value on scholarly things, but more on military things.

Dahm, Murray K. “The roman frontier signaling and the order of the Futhark.” The Journal Of Indo-European Studies 39 (2011) 1-12.

            The order of the Futhark has long puzzled scholars. It does not seem to follow any of the traditional rules of alphabet adoption, but the order is found often enough that scholars are pretty secure in saying that is the official order. The break up of the futhark is thus f u p a r k g w / h n i j ï p z s / t b e m l ! o d. notice it is in no way divided phontecically. (I want to add that this division is laid out by Dahm, he chose to write the futhark this way, using the latin inspirations, not the actual runes.)

            Murray Dahm believes that the Futhark was most likely derived from the latin alphabet, and follows Henrik Williams thought that shape alone gives us the origin of the runes (a discussion of Williams’ writing can be found in an earlier entry of this blog) like Williams he believes that the inventor of the runes was most likely a German who was intimately aware of the latin alphabet. It might be that the sound values of the futhark were added later. (this belief may be why Dahm refers to it as fupark in his article, as recognizing the p shape in the [th] symbol)

            The creator of the Futhark had to be aware of Roman culture, we must accept that if the futhark was inspired by Roman Alphabets, it had to also be tied into roman culture. Part of this roman culture can be found at walls, palisades, and forts at the edges of the Roman Frontier. There are the obvious examples like at Hadrians Wall in Britain. There were also barriers at Raetia, and Germania. These various fortifications offer an explanation, and various locations of where Roman culture would have been disseminated to Germanic peoples.

            These forts and towers had the capabilities of signaling messages to each other, and used these signals to send information back to the interior of Rome. Not too surprisingly we don’t know very much about these signaling systems, most likely because these signaling systems would have been held as very high priority military secrets.

            We learn bits and pieces about how these signaling systems worked from different primary sources of the ancient world. Probably the best description of one of these signaling systems comes from Africanus in his Kestoi, a collection of miscellaneous information relating chiefly to magic, but other subjects too. His Kestoi was dedicated to Emperor Severus Alexander (reigned AD 222-245) His information on signaling is a lot then the origin date of Futhark, but it is likely that the signaling during the time of the futhark was not so different.

In chapter 77 Africanus includes this observation (translation by J. P. Wild (Wooliscroft2001, 168):

"The Romans have the following technique which seems to me to be amazing. If they want to communicate something by fire signal, they make the signals so: they select places that are suitable for making fire signals. They divide the fires into a right, a leftand a middle fire so that they read alpha to theta from the left-hand one, iota to pi from the middle one and rho to omega from the right-hand fire. If they signal alpha, they raise up the fire signal on the leftonce, for beta twice and for gamma three times. If they signal iota they raise the middle fire once, for kappa twice and for lambda thrice, and if they want to signal rho, sigma or tau, they raise the right-hand signal once, twice or three times. In this way should you want to signal rho you do not need to raise hundreds of fire signals, but only one with the right-hand torch. Those who receive the signals then de-code them in the same way, or pass them on to the next station."

            Africanus was a Greek and thus would have described the Greek alphabet, but this same method would have been used to send latin signals, and latin was the language of the roman military. Through out the Roman empire the military conducted all of it’s messages and transcripts in Latin, Egyptian troops would have used Latin, Greek troops would have used Latin, and Germanic troops would have used Latin. They may have spoken to each other in their own languages, but messages were not sent in languages of ‘defeat’.

            Germanic troops would have learned the Latin alphabet within the context of signaling. This could explain why the Futhark is divided into three separate sections, with 8 runes represented in each section. By dividing the futhark like this each letter could be represented cryptographically. So to send the signal for c, you simply had to send the signal 1/6 meaning the first grouping, sixth rune.

            If a code was broken, it could be disastrous for military campaigns. If the enemy understood your code, they could send false signals to your allies, causing chaos on both sides, leaving places of weakness open, that is aside from the basic handiness of knowing when forts would be at their weakest. Since these codes were so valuable to the strategy and lives of soldiers, it is very likely that the code was changed often, and because it was changed often a key probably needed to be given to everyone, so they would be able to fact check the signals they received.

            This key was probably a grid that laid out the various values for each of the letters, the inventor of Futhark most likely had access to one of these grid systems, or keys. It does not matter if this grid was out of date, it would have been extremely useful in guiding him in his invention of futhark. The division of the futhark is a great clue to a military origin, adding to the theory of a Latin origin.

            

The Runic Script, Ralph W. Elliot

The Runic Script, Ralph W Elliot

            The earliest runic inscriptions from the Denmark and Schleswig- Holstein are all written on portable objects, dating from the 1^st centuries CE. Most of these runic inscriptions appear to be from the Germanic migration period, and might explain why early findings are so broadly distributed throughout Europe. These inscriptions show ‘remarkable’ uniformity, and  variable direction of writing. There was a clear consensus on how these symbols were inscribed, but it appears the direction of the writing was up to the inscriber. The most common direction of writing was left to right, there are some examples of boustrophedon, and right to left, but these are less common.

            The language of the runes is understood as either Runic, or Northwest Germanic, depending on what you want to call it. For the most part the letters of runic are well understood, we know what sounds they produced with a few exceptions. The runic alphabet is comprised of 24 letters, each of these letters, (or runes) had an acrophonic name, these acrophonic names were uniform across Europe, excluding the addition of five runic names by the Anglo Saxons.

            During the Viking age Runes spread from its continental European birthplace, to as far as Iceland and Greenland. There are some “runic” inscriptions found on the American continent, but most scholars accept today that these inscriptions are forgeries, despite the legitimacy of them being defended by hobbyists and amateur archeologists.

            After the Viking age saw a massive spread of Runic, developments were made in different areas that caused changes from the old Futhark, and regional differences in runic usage, letter meaning, and letter count emerged.

            During the eighth century in Denmark the Runic alphabet was reduced from 24, to 16 runes. A majority of the runes maintained their previous usage, but some were changed based on regional needs, for example in Scandinavia the loss of the initial j- sound meant the changing, or loss of that rune.

            For some reason as the centuries moved along a reduction in the runic Futhark became more common, at least in Scandinavia. The 16 letter alphabet also saw a change in writing styles. During the early eleventh century in Halsinge Sweden we find a ‘staveless’ runic style. It appears to work as a bit of a short hand. If you look at the runic tables I have provided, you will find most of the runes are built on a vertical ‘stave’ with lines branching out at angles. The staveless runic style, as the name would suggest, lacks the stave or stem that the rune is built on.

            With the reduction in alphabet size, the runic as incapable of matching up with phonetic values very well, obviously certain runes had to take on multiple phones.  To try and accommodate this failing, a system of ‘pointed’ or ‘dotted’  runes emerged, it was known in Danish as stungne runer. this pointed system gradually made it possible for the runes to be considered more of an alphabet, in some ways adding the points or dots brought the futhark back to their original usefulness.

            Anglo Saxons brought to the british isles the very same common Futhark that was found on continental Europe, these two writing styles although emerging from the exact same Futhark diverged greatly because of geographical, and lingual differences.

            The first main difference was that the runes grew in number,  as apposed to shrinking in Scandinavia. The total number of runes grew to 31 by the tenth century. The addition of runes probably came due to lingual differences between the Germanic peoples, and the languages spoken on the British Isles.

            The runes on the British Isles are referred to as Futhorc, this is because of the slow change that occurred with Germanic.  As Germanic went through a transitional Anglo-Frisian phase, and eventually leading up to Old English. This change lead to a change in the phonetic values of the fourth and sixth runes.  The only complete epigraphic Anglo-Saxon Futhorc is inscribed on a short sword scramasax, of the ninth century found in the River Thames.

            With the spread of Christianity on the british isles the runes continue to be used for a few centuries, but mainly for writing poetry, and especially the signing of ones own name on said poetry. It is also found alongside latin writing on burial memorials.