Runic alphabets have seen numerous uses since the 18th-century Viking revival, in Scandinavian Romantic nationalism (Gothicismus) and Germanic occultism in the 19th century, and in the context of the Fantasy genre and of Germanic Neopaganism in the 20th century.
The use of medieval runes mostly disappears in the course of the 14th century. An exception are the Dalecarlian runes, which survived, heavily influenced by the Latin alphabet, into the 19th century. Occasional use of runes also seems to have persisted elsewhere, as evidenced by the 16th-century Faroer Fámjin stone.
Antiquarian interest in runes first arises in the 16th century, with the 1555 Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus by Olaus Magnus, and picks up in the 17th century, notably with Peder Resen's Edda Islandorum of 1665. In the 17th century, runology pioneer Johannes Bureus published his Runa ABC , the first Swedish alphabet book.
Runic calendars are perpetual calendar based on the 19-year-long Metonic cycle of the Moon. They may originate as early as in the 13th century, but most surviving examples date to the early modern period. Most of the several thousand which survive are wooden calendars date from the 16th century onward. Around 1800, such calendars were made in the form of tobacco boxes in brass.
The pioneer of the Armanist branch of Ariosophy and one of the more important figures in esotericism in Germany and Austria in the late 19th and early 20th century was the Austrian occultist, mysticist, and völkisch author, Guido von List. In 1908, he published in Das Geheimnis der Runen ("The Secret of the Runes") a set of eighteen so-called "Armanen runes", based on the Younger Futhark and runes of List's own introduction, which allegedly were revealed to him in a state of temporary blindness after cataract operations on both eyes in 1902.
List's row is based on the Younger Futhark, with the names and sound values mostly close to the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc. The tenth rune ' Ar ', and the final "rune", Gibor, were added to the Younger Futhark inventory. The first, was possibly taken from Anglo-Saxon - ' Cen ' rune, inverted, so that the short 'leg' points to the left, rather than to the right, as it did in the original Anglo-Saxon runic alphabet. Or, more likely, from the Swedish Dalecarlian - ' Er ' rune (the only extant rune which looks exactly like it, and has a very similar sound value). The second, was a medieval German heraldic symbol, originally representing a wolf trap. The latter, had nothing at all to do with runes, untill List 'made' it a "rune" by adding it to the inventory. Apart from the two additional runes, and a displacement of the Man rune from 13th to 15th place, the sequence is identical to that of the Younger Futhark. In his English translation of the work, Stephen Flowers insists that the final h in the name futharkh is not a misspelling, but indicates the seventh rune, Hagal.
The first sixteen of von List's runes correspond to the sixteen Younger Futhark runes, with slight modifications in names (and partly mirrored shapes). The two additional runes are loosely inspired by the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc. The first sixteen are named Fa, Ur, Thurs, Os, Rit, Ka, Hagal, Nauth, Is, Ar, Sig, Tyr, Bar, Laf, Man, Yr. The final two are Eh (the name is from Anglo-Saxon Futhork, the shape like Younger Futhark Ar) and Gibor (the name similar to Anglo-Saxon Futhork Gyfu, but in shape similar to a Wolfsangel symbol).
Karl Maria Wiligut in 1934 developed a rune row loosely based on List's Armanen runes, even though Wiligut rejected List's runes and his overall philosophy. Wiligut claimed to have been initiated into "runic lore" by his grandfather Karl Wiligut (1794–1883). His rune row has 24 letters, like the Elder Futhark. Like von List's Armanen runes that are closely based on the Younger Futhark, many of Wiligut's runes are identical to historical runes, with some additions. The historical Futhark sequence is not preserved. [1]
Wiligut's names for his runes are: Tel, Man, Kaun, Fa, Asa, Os, Eis, Not, Tor, Tyr, Laf, Rit, Thorn, Ur, Sig, Zil, Yr, Hag-Al, H, Wend-horn, Gibor, Eh, Othil, Bar-Bjork. Runes without direct precedent in the historical runes are Tel (a crossed ring, similar to the sun cross symbol), Tor (like a Latin T), Zil (like a rotated Latin Z), Gibor (taken from von List's runes). The shape of Wend-horn is similar to Tvimadur.
The use of runes in Germanic mysticism, notably List's "Armanen runes" and the derived "Wiligut runes" played a certain role in Nazi symbolism. The fascination with runic symbolism was mostly limited to Heinrich Himmler, and not shared by the other members of the Nazi top echelon. Consequently, runes appear mostly in insignia associated with the Schutzstaffel , the paramilitary organization led by Himmler. Wiligut is credited with designing the SS-Ehrenring, which displays a number of "Wiligut runes".
In German esotericism after 1945, List's Armanen runes became somewhat detached from its völkisch associations and became part of general "pansophical" or eclectic occultism, notably due to the publications by Karl Spiesberger. During the New Age boom of the 1980s, the Armanen runes may well have been more popularly known in Germany than the historical runes. [2]
From the 1970s, a revival of interest in the historical runes developed in the emerging movements associated with Germanic neopaganism, and to a lesser extent in other forms of Neopaganism and New Age esotericism. Various systems of Runic divination have been published since the 1980s, notably by Ralph Blum (1982), Stephen Flowers (1984, onward), Stephan Grundy (1990), and Nigel Pennick (1995).
The Uthark theory, originally proposed as a scholarly hypothesis by Sigurd Agrell in 1932, was received in runic esotericism via Kenneth Meadows' Rune Power (1995) and Thomas Karlsson's Uthark: Nightside of the Runes (2002). [3]
A number of notable runestones of modern origin exist. Some of them are intended as hoaxes, their creators attempting to imitate a Viking Age artefact. This mostly concerns the American runestones, such as the Kensington runestone or the Oklahoma runestones.
Especially since the late 20th century, runestones in the style of the Viking Age were also made without pretense of authenticity, either as independent works of art or as replicas as museum exhibits or tourist attractions. [4]
In J. R. R. Tolkien's novel The Hobbit (1937), the Anglo-Saxon runes are used on a map to emphasize its connection to the Dwarves. They also were used in the initial drafts of The Lord of the Rings , but later were replaced by the Cirth rune-like alphabet invented by Tolkien.
Tolkien's mode of writing Modern English in Anglo-Saxon runes received explicit recognition with the introduction of three extra runes to the Unicode Runic block used by him in Unicode version 7.0 (2014). The three characters represent the English k, oo and sh graphemes, as follows:
The k rune was published with The Hobbit (1937), e.g. for writing Tolkien's own name, as ᛁ ᚱ ᚱ ᛏᚩᛚᛱᛁᛖᚾ. His oo and sh runes are known from a postcard written to Katherine Farrer on 30 November 1947, published as no. 112 in The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981). [6]
Tolkien's mode for writing Modern English is mostly based on orthography, transcribing each letter, with a few special runes used for frequent digraphs, as follows: [7]
| grapheme | a | b | c | d | e | ea | ee | eo | f | g | h | i, j | k | l | m | n | ng | o oa | oo | p | qu | r | s | sh | st | t | th | u, v | w | x | y | z |
| rune | ᚫ, ᚪ, ᚩ [8] | ᛒ | ᚳ | ᛞ | ᛖ | ᛠ | ᛟ | ᛇ [9] | ᚠ | ᚷ | ᚻ | ᛁ | ᛱ | ᛚ | ᛗ | ᚾ | ᛝ | ᚩ | ᛳ | ᛈ | ᚳᚹ [10] | ᚱ | ᛋ | ᛲ [11] | ᛥ | ᛏ | ᚦ | ᚢ | ᚹ | ᛉ, ᛡ | ᚣ | ᛣ |
The Cirth is a semi‑artificial script, based on real‑life runic alphabets, one of several scripts invented by J. R. R. Tolkien for the constructed languages he devised and used in his works. Cirth is written with a capital letter when referring to the writing system; the letters themselves can be called cirth.
Karl Maria Wiligut was an Austrian Völkisch occultist and soldier. He served in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I and was a leading figure in the Irminism movement, eventually joining the SS after being recruited by Heinrich Himmler.
Othala, also known as ēðel and odal, is a rune that represents the o and œ phonemes in the Elder Futhark and the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc writing systems respectively. Its name is derived from the reconstructed Proto-Germanic *ōþala- "heritage; inheritance, inherited estate". As it does not occur in Younger Futhark, it disappears from the Scandinavian record around the 8th century, however its usage continued in England into the 11th century, where it was sometimes further used in manuscripts as a shorthand for the word ēðel ("homeland"), similar to how other runes were sometimes used at the time.
Wynn or wyn is a letter of the Old English alphabet, where it is used to represent the sound.
A rune is a letter in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write Germanic languages before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised purposes thereafter. In addition to representing a sound value, runes can be used to represent the concepts after which they are named (ideographs). Scholars refer to instances of the latter as Begriffsrunen. The Scandinavian variants are also known as fuþark, or futhark; this name is derived from the first six letters of the script, ⟨ᚠ⟩, ⟨ᚢ⟩, ⟨ᚦ⟩, ⟨ᚨ⟩/⟨ᚬ⟩, ⟨ᚱ⟩, and ⟨ᚲ⟩/⟨ᚴ⟩, corresponding to the Latin letters ⟨f⟩, ⟨u⟩, ⟨þ⟩/⟨th⟩, ⟨a⟩, ⟨r⟩, and ⟨k⟩. The Anglo-Saxon variant is known as futhorc, or fuþorc, due to changes in Old English of the sounds represented by the fourth letter, ⟨ᚨ⟩/⟨ᚩ⟩.
ᛈ is the rune denoting the sound p in the Elder Futhark runic alphabet. It does not appear in the Younger Futhark. It is named peorð in the Anglo-Saxon rune-poem and glossed enigmatically as follows:
The Younger Futhark, also called Scandinavian runes, is a runic alphabet and a reduced form of the Elder Futhark, with only 16 characters, in use from about the 9th century, after a "transitional period" during the 7th and 8th centuries. The reduction, somewhat paradoxically, happened at the same time as phonetic changes that led to a greater number of different phonemes in the spoken language, when Proto-Norse evolved into Old Norse. Also, the writing custom avoided carving the same rune consecutively for the same sound, so the spoken distinction between long and short vowels was lost in writing. Thus, the language included distinct sounds and minimal pairs that were written the same.
The Elder Futhark, also known as the Older Futhark, Old Futhark, or Germanic Futhark, is the oldest form of the runic alphabets. It was a writing system used by Germanic peoples for Northwest Germanic dialects in the Migration Period. Inscriptions are found on artifacts including jewelry, amulets, plateware, tools, and weapons, as well as runestones, from the 1st to the 9th centuries.
Algiz is the name conventionally given to the "z-rune" ᛉ of the Elder Futhark runic alphabet. Its transliteration is z, understood as a phoneme of the Proto-Germanic language, the terminal *z continuing Proto-Indo-European terminal *s via Verner's law.
Gyfu is the name for the g-rune ᚷ in the Anglo-Saxon rune poem, meaning 'gift' or 'generosity':
Armanen runes are 18 pseudo-runes, inspired by the historic Younger Futhark runes, invented by Austrian mysticist and Germanic revivalist Guido von List during a state of temporary blindness in 1902, and described in his Das Geheimnis der Runen, published as a periodical article in 1906, and as a standalone publication in 1908. The name seeks to associate the runes with the postulated Armanen, whom von List saw as ancient Aryan priest-kings. The runes continue in use today in esotericism and in Germanic neopaganism.
*Haglaz or *Hagalaz is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name of the h-rune ᚺ, meaning "hail".
Anglo-Saxon runes or Anglo-Frisian runes are runes that were used by the Anglo-Saxons and Medieval Frisians as an alphabet in their native writing system, recording both Old English and Old Frisian. Today, the characters are known collectively as the futhorc from the sound values of the first six runes. The futhorc was a development from the older co-Germanic 24-character runic alphabet, known today as Elder Futhark, expanding to 28 characters in its older form and up to 34 characters in its younger form. In contemporary Scandinavia, the Elder Futhark developed into a shorter 16-character alphabet, today simply called Younger Futhark.
Armanism and Ariosophy are esoteric ideological systems that were largely developed by Guido von List and Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels, respectively, in Austria between 1890 and 1930. The term 'Ariosophy', which translates to wisdom of the Aryans, was invented by Lanz von Liebenfels in 1915, and during the 1920s, it became the name of his doctrine. For research on the topic, such as Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's book The Occult Roots of Nazism, the term 'Ariosophy' is generically used to describe the Aryan/esoteric theories which constituted a subset of the 'Völkische Bewegung'. This broader use of the word is retrospective and it was not generally current among the esotericists themselves. List actually called his doctrine 'Armanism', while Lanz used the terms 'Theozoology' and 'Ario-Christianity' before the First World War.
A runic inscription is an inscription made in one of the various runic alphabets. They generally contained practical information or memorials instead of magic or mythic stories. The body of runic inscriptions falls into the three categories of Elder Futhark, Anglo-Frisian Futhorc and Younger Futhark.
The t-rune ᛏ is named after Týr, and was identified with this god. The reconstructed Proto-Germanic name is *Tîwaz or *Teiwaz. Tiwaz rune was an ideographic symbol for a spear.
Sowilo (*sōwilō), meaning "sun", is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic language name of the s-rune.
Mannaz is the conventional name of the /m/ rune ᛗ of the Elder Futhark. It is derived from the reconstructed Proto-Germanic word for 'man', *mannaz.
Pseudo-runes are letters that look like Germanic runes but are not true ancient runes. The term is mostly used of incised characters that are intended to imitate runes. Pseudo-runes in this sense are difficult to distinguish from cipher runes, which are characters used as a replacement of standard runes but which do have an intended reading, while pseudo-runes have no linguistic content.
Runic is a Unicode block containing runic characters. It was introduced in Unicode 3.0 (1999), with eight additional characters introduced in Unicode 7.0 (2014). The original encoding of runes in UCS was based on the recommendations of the "ISO Runes Project" submitted in 1997.
