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.
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