Runes: First week

Today in Staffan Fridell’s Runology class we spent most of our time on the 24-character Elder Fuþark, which was in use from about AD 100 to 700 to transcribe sounds in either North Germanic or, arguably, Northwest Germanic. (This distinction centers on exactly when the language in Scandinavia began to diverge from that in present-day Germany, Holland and England.)

As for origins, most scholars attribute a Classical source for the original idea to write down language with these particular characters. Latin, Greek, Etruscan and others have been proposed as the alphabet which inspired the first rune-carver, but the consensus now is that that Latin was probably the primary, and arguably only, source. Many believe that the origination of runes was due to one prime mover — that their invention was because of one individual who decided to effect this innovation, rather than a conscious effort on the part of a group or collective. That runes then spread so widely so quickly is testament to the compelling nature of written communication, even in such a primitive form.

There are a few problems involved in the transliteration of letters from the Runic to the Latin alphabet. One is that we believe Proto-Norse (North Germanic) to have had two distinct “r” sounds, one that is similar to ours today and one that was quite different: a palatal r sound transcribed as either [z] or [R], depending on whether one is working with runological or phonological texts. Another difference in professional practice between Runology and Phonology is the former’s tendency to use the rune- derived [þ] instead of the greek [θ] symbol for the dental fricative.

Runes were given name according to the acrophonic principle: the glyphs had names that began with the sound of the rune itself. There were two exceptions to this principle: *ingwaz and *algiz, because neither the [Å‹] nor the [z] sound could be used to begin a word.

The Elder Fuþark was the foundation for two later innovations: the 28-character Anglo-Saxon runic alphabet, and the 16-character Younger Fuþark which developed in Scandinavia during the 700s.