Runes: Clues to Uncovering the Past
The runic alphabet is an ancient Germanic alphabet that was used throughout Northern Europe, Scandinavia, the British Isles, and Iceland from the first century C.E. well into the Middle Ages. This alphabet, used by the Anglo-Saxons and shared with other Germanic peoples, was brought to England at the time of the Anglo-Saxon invasions . While runes enjoyed widespread usage among the peoples of the area, there is no concrete agreement as to the origin of this writing system. Runes fell into disuse as the Roman alphabets became the preferred script of most of Europe, but their forms and meanings were preserved in inscriptions and manuscripts. The alphabet is referred to as the (Old English) futhorc or (Germanic) futhark, after the first six letters . Runic letters consisted mostly of intersecting straight lines and were designed to be engraved on stone, wood, metal or bone. Their essential purpose was to serve as a simple means of communication or a practical method of correspondence.
Many of the letters in the runic alphabet appear to have been borrowed from other alphabets, such as the Greek, the Etruscan, and the early Roman alphabets. However,
where and when runes were invented is not known. They hold obvious similarities with the Roman alphabet which led early scholars to believe that the script first appeared among Germanic people close to the Roman Empire, with the implication that they were an adaptation of the more prestigious alphabet for barbarian purposes. Since runes were used as a practical method of correspondence, the alphabet was developed out of necessity. Although runes were designed to serve as a simple means of communication or correspondence, most runic in...
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...ught of as a single script or language. A range of related scripts, used widely for different languages and purposes, must be recognized. The total number of known runic inscriptions is probably in the region of five thousand, with the great majority of those being in Sweden. Norway has over one thousand inscriptions, and Denmark has around seven hundred. Anglo-Saxon England has around seventy inscribed objects .
The study of early runes is of great importance because they provide accounts of a time for which no other evidence survives. Runes provide a glimpse into the antiquated societies from which our society evolved and an understanding of the etymology of our language. Although their practicality eventually became outdated and they were replaced with the Roman alphabet, remnants of the runic system still survive and are of continuing interest today.
There are runes and magic in the narratives of the poem Beowulf and The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki, an Iceland saga representing 1000 years of oral traditions prior to the 1300’s when it was written.
Regarding the runes on the sword hilt, G. Stephens in his Handbook of Runic Monuments maintains that the only Anglo-Saxon runic inscription on a sword hilt is on the Gilton sword, and that it is unintelligible (Cramp 128).
The Younger Futhark Runes use ligatures. Ligatures are basically a small group of runes written together. They contain no gaps. This group is combined into a single symbol.
In Beowulf we see the mention of runes used with connotations of magic or charms. Examining historic evidence, we find that early Englishmen used runes sometimes with connotations of magic and sometimes without such implied meanings.
Odin was the god of wisdom, magic and runes (“The Pagan Library”). The runes were the alphabet of the Vikings. Rune stones is the only documented writing from the Vikings during their existence, so a lot of the history during the ...
For many, the world of Runescape is an unfamiliar world. Runescape involves many players in a medieval world of ghosts, goblins, and dangerous dragons. By fighting these monsters, characters can level up and get stronger. Each combat level that a player acquires increases his or her character’s strength by one point. People outside this discourse community would have a difficult time trying to understand everything that is going on in this internet game. Even people playing for years might not know everything there is to know about the game. It takes about two weeks to understand and incorporate Runescape’s terms and ways to trade, but that two weeks goes by plenty fast. Breaking things down to its simplest parts is a tough thing to do, but it puts the world of Runescape into view for others that have not heard about the game. Interacting with the other players of Runescape and understanding what the other people are trying to say are key survival techniques that must be used in order to last in this game.
Writing is perhaps the most important building block of communication - after verbal speech, of course. Writing, like most of human civilization, has its roots in ancient Mesopotamia. The first writing systems began in a style known as cuneiform (Cuneiform, 2013). These wedge-shaped markings have their roots in Sumerian culture and were used predominantly for record keeping and accounting. At the archaeological site of Uruk in what is modern day Iraq, a great wealth of knowledge has been gained from the artifacts located there. Uruk was a ceremonial site and is home to the world’s oldest known documented written documents (Price and Feinman, 2013). The documents discovered list quantities of goods that may have been stored at Uruk, leading archaeologists to believe that writing in this part of the world was developed primarily to keep lists of transactions and stockpiled quantities of goods located at the site.
Egyptian hieroglyphs were carved in stone, and later hieratic script was written on papyrus. However, Olmec glyphs was discovered on cylinders. Hence, Egyptians and Olmec had different types of writing, and different places to write.
were not the first to use writing and several areas such as Mesopotamia developed writing
civilization. They started the Olympic games. Greeks come up with the idea of an alphabet
The origin of this font can be traced back to the 1920’s when a German typeface designer, Paul Renner, created it. A German professor of the Bauhaus school, Jakob Erbar created the first geometric sans-serif typeface. It was designed for pure functionality, which was based on a circle, square and triangle. After this, Renner decided to improve on the typeface and improved it to be the font we know today.
Still, there are many other writing systems of numerous lost civilizations that have yet to be deciphered. Until then, we can only make well thought inferences, and educated guesses until the next Rosetta Stone is unearthed. Works Cited 1. What is the difference between a. and a. Budge, Sir E. A. Wallis. Egyptian Language- Easy Lessons in Egyptian Hieroglyphs.
The earliest writing in Mesopotamia was a picture writing invented by the Sumerians who wrote on clay tablets using long reeds. The script the Sumerians invented and handed down to the Semitic peoples who conquered Mesopotamia in later centuries, is called cuneiform, which is derived from two Latin words: cuneus , which means "wedge," and forma , which means "shape." This picture language, similar to but more abstract than Egyptian hieroglyphics, eventually developed into a syllabic alphabet under the Semites (Assyrians and Babylonians) who eventually came to dominate the area.
In the Old English poem Beowulf and in the Icelandic The Saga of the Volsungs, a saga representing oral traditions dating back to the fourth and fifth centuries, we see the mention of runes, which were used with connotations of magic or charms.
In the Old English poem Beowulf we see the mention of runes, which were used with connotations of magic or charms. Examining evidence from historic times, we find that early Englishmen were fully conversant with the Germanic runic alphabet and that runes did have special connotations.