The runes have been friends and travelling companions for some years now, and this site would not be complete without a brief section on them. These few introductory paragraphs are only the beginning of what I hope will be a detailed study someday.
The runes of the Elder Futhark are an ancient Norse or Teutonic system of writing, and they are also oracular devices which have been in use in Europe and Iceland since about 400 CE. During the period from 400 CE to 1600 CE they also served as a system of communications, a way of writing and relaying information. There is a wealth of runic inscriptions surviving from ancient times, including many inscriptions in North America, and this lends support to historical theories that it was the Vikings who really discovered North America, and that they traveled widely on this continent centuries before the arrival of Columbus on our shores.
The word "rune" means variously, "tree", "secret whisper", "mystery" or "hidden", and it can be applied to a whole group of Norse or Teutonic alphabets which were probably developed for divination and magic - we know that the runes have been used for arcane purposes since ancient times. Each rune has a unique pattern, an intrinsic meaning and characteristics above and beyond its ordinary significance just as one character in an alphabet. Singly or in groups, the runic patterns are a way of unlocking and understanding the invisible or hidden realities of one's existence. Each runic name is a unique term embodying philosophical concepts which were of profound importance to the ancient people who first used the runes. The runes represent elemental or fundamental forces of nature and of the spirit; each rune with its own tale and its own association with a god of the Norse or Teutonic pantheon.
The mythological origin of the runes is significant, and Teutonic mythology and folklore speak of the sacrifice of Odin, highest of the Aesir, to acquire them. All Father Odin understood instinctively that true wisdom and second sight may only be attained through sacrifice. For nine nine days and nine nights he hung on the world tree (Yggdrasil), impaled on his own spear. On the ninth day, a raven sent by the three Norns plucked out one of his eyes, and he was transformed, seeing and taking up the runes when they were revealed to him lying at the bottom of the World Tree. In so doing, he was gifted with true wisdom and power. The cost of acquiring the knowledge had been enormous suffering and physical death, but through the force of his will and the strength of his committment, Odin was reborn, returning to life with the knowledge of the Other World which the runes conveyed. Afterward, he transmitted his knowledge of the runes to the goddess Freyja in return for learning the magical secrets of Seithr from her. It was Hagal or Heimdall, the "watcher" god, eternal guardian of the Rainbow Bridge, who later gifted humanity with the secrets of the runes.
The Elder Futhark is the oldest of the existing runic systems, and it consists of twenty-four characters. The letters of the first six runes of the runic alphabet, (F)eu, (U)ruz, (TH)urisaz, (A)nsu, R)aido, and (K)enaz give the system its name, Futhark. A blank twenty-fifth rune called Wyrd is often used today along with the runes of the Elder Futhark, but this is a fairly new development. Wyrd is a name which is associated with the three Norse sisters known collectively as the Norns, and individually as Urdhr (the past), Verhandi (the present) and Skul (the future) The three sisters are responsible for tending the world tree Yggdrasil, and they are also the weavers at the loom of destiny. Together they represent the source of all knowledge and of all powers of divination. On their loom, the Norns see everything which transpires in the Nine Worlds, past, present and future, and with their considerable vision and their formidable power, they could certainly meddle in the affairs of gods and humanity, but they allow the gods and humanity to follow their own paths and work out their own destinies.
As the knowledge and use of the runes spread across Europe, carried by the invading Teutonic tribes, other runic systems began to develop from them. When the Angle, Jute and Saxon tribes invaded Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries, they brought their rune system with them, and significant changes occurred to the runes after they arrived in Britain. Several runes were changed to fit in with the British language, specifically the runes for A/O, C/K, H, J, S, and Ng, and new runes were added to represent different sounds in the British tongue. The new alphabet, which was comprised of thirty-three characters rather than the original twenty-four characters, was known thereafter as the Anglo-Saxon Futhark.
The Origin of the Runes
There has been much speculation about the origin of the runes, but the runic alphabet is ancient indeed, and scholars have yet to reach an agreement about where it all began.
It has been speculated that the runes originated in the Greek alphabet of circa 600 BCE. It has also been suggested that the runes were actually derived from an early Latin alphabet. There is a theory is that the runes originated in the ancient Etruscan culture of Italy, and this theory was substantiated somewhat by archaeological discoveries at Negau in the early nineteenth century - the remarkable bronze helmets which weree unearthed at Negau bore Germanic inscriptions which had been rendered in Etruscan script, and the inscriptions on the helmets are invocations to the war god Harigast. There is another theory which holds that the runes evolved from the Hallristningar rock pictographs carved during the later part of the Stone Age or early Bronze Age in Europe. Examples of these pictographs have been discovered in Sweden, Germany, Italy, Austria and other parts of mainland Europe. Whatever their origin, the runes and runic folkore were an important part of the ancestral inheritance of the northern Teutonic tribes who originated in the Scandinavian countries and migrated southward. Like the Hebrew language, the runes were written from right to left, and this would seem to indicate that the runic alphabet is at least as ancient as the Hebrew language.
The expansion of the runes was one result of the decline of Imperial Rome's influence in Europe and the ascendancy of the Teutonic tribes. By about 410 CE, the Visigoths had conquered Rome and parts of Spain, and they had established an empire of their own - their influence in Spain wwould endure uuntil the Moorish conquests of the eighth century. By the end of the sixth century Britain had been invaded by not one, but three seperate tribes, the Jutes, the Angles and the Saxons, and several kingdoms existed in Britain, notably in Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex. As they moved westward, the invading tribes took their runes with them, and the use of the runes took hold wherever the tribes settled.
Early Christianity abhorred divination in general and the runes specifically. The expansion of Christianity into mainland Europe seriously threatened the survival of the runes in any form and for any purpose whatsoever, but they managed to survive, even in the twelfth century when the Vatican decreed them to be dangerous and soul destroying devices and forbade their use on pain of death. The runes also survived a second papal decree in 1639, and in fact, they continued in use as an alphabet right up until the nineteenth century. Some Runic characters have been integrated into modern Nordic languages, but from the nineteenth century on, the runes (in their entirety anyway) have been in use solely as oracular devices. The last known Rune Masters or runic shamans of formal affiliation were probably those in Iceland during the seventeenth century.
The real beginnings of the runes lie within the ancient heroic epics of the Aesir and the dark and icy climes of northern Europe. Today, the seemingly random fall of the stones onto the rune cloth represents the distilled essence of an ancient, magical and powerful tradition.
