Wikipedia:WikiProject Runology

The Runology WikiProject is a collaboration area and project dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of the function, history, culture, and language, of "runes", the indigenous writing system of the Germanic peoples, which was in active use throughout various iterations and various regions from around the Roman Iron Age to the Late Middle Ages, with various archaic and learned use beyond. This academic area is called "runology" (the "study of runes and runic alphabets" etc).

Basic history

Roots

Runes developed from Old Italic scripts according to modern research. Almost every Elder rune can be found sporadically in Old Italic script, however, the records are very spotty and research is largely regional/understudied. Most runic analogs in Old Italic script are from northern Italian regions, like Raetia, indicating that the system traveled via land. The earliest Germanic writing is written in the northern Etruscan alphabet, likewise an Old Italic script, found on one of the Negau helmets found in northeastern Slovenia, dated to the period before 1 AD, further indicating that Old Italic script knowledge existed in Proto-Germanic scociety.

Old Italic script dissappeared around 200-100 BC, while the oldest runic find, the Hole Runestone, dates to around 50 BC to 250 BC, showing a possible overlap where Old Italic script survived in Central/Northern Europe. Some Elder runes also appear to derive from Greek and Latin alphabets, although such derivatives are also found sporadically in Old Italic script. Runes with no clear analogs, like ᚦ (/th/), presumably named "Thorn", could realistically be new inventions for the Proto-Germanic language, especially since the rune visually appears like a thorn.

However, it is also worth noting that the Elder runic script appears to purposefully differentiate itself from Latin script. Not only is it phonetically designed for the Proto-Germanic language in mind, but the Runic order is completely different from the common ABC-order of most Western writing systems (minus Ogham). This could also explain why obsolete Old Italic characters where reused, instead of modern Latin characters. The term rune is assumed to mean "secret" at its core, which independantly survives in Swedish and Gaelic etc, with the related sense "spell" and "(magical) folk poem" etc in Norwegian and Finnish respectively. Despite early finds, it is not possible to say where in Europe runes initially were introduced, appearing sporadically over large areas. It's not impossible that runes were a collaborative co-Germanic effort that was introduced simultaneously as to keep up with the times.

Rune names

Each rune traditionally has an assigned name indicating its sound value (like Day for D, Lake for L, etc), a system intended to allow illiterate people to learn how to use and read runes, coupled with nursery rhymes etc. The names probably varried regionally to some degree, but appears to have been specifically chosen as to produce the correct sound value over large areas, using words with little shift between dialects. Names are only documented from the 9th century onward, but through recorded ideographic use, earlier use of such names is warranted – see Ideographic runes. The Gothic alphabet, developed in the 4th century, appears to have reused many rune names for the new charactes, which are also used ideographically at times. Through ideographic use, and a full name list recorded by Alcuin of York in the late 8th century, the Gothic names appear mostly analog to the Anglo-Saxon runic names recorded in the 9th century.

Through the Gothic names, Anglo-Saxon names and Norse names, the assumed Elder names can largely be reconstructed, some with higher warranty than other. Some Gothic names are recorded both in Gothic literature and by Alcuin of York, and while Alcuin recorded names for all Gothic characters, he did so when the Gothic alphabet was already largely out of use, on top of writing them out phonetically using the Latin alphabet, thus contrasting heavily with the few forms found in Gothic literature, which often shows to be earlier forms than what Alcuin recorded. This helps with the chronology of reconstructing the Elder rune names. However, the recorded Norse names, with some exceptions, stems from the Younger Futhark of only 16 base-runes, which means that some Elder rune names can only be extrapolated from Anglo-Saxon and Gothic references. On top of this, some Old Norse names differ from the Anglo-Gothic names, or the vice versa, etc, making it hard at times to know which of the recorded names to be the probable original.

A likely example, only deriving from Anglo-Saxon and Gothic, is the reconstructed name for the Elder g-rune ᚷ: *Gebō ("gift"), with some variation. The Gothic literature name is 𐌲𐌹𐌱𐌰 (giba, "gift"), while the Alcuin name is geuua (gewa), showing similar linguistic development to the Norse cognate (Old Swedish: gāva, Old Icelandic: gáfa, "gift"). The Anglo-Saxon name is Gyfu ("gift"). Due to this, the reconstructed Elder name of "gift" is highly likely, despite this rune being absent from the 16-type Old Norse Younger Futhark.

Cases become more complicated when we lack a Gothic literature name, leaving us to work with the Alcuin name from a Gothic point of view. For example, the Elder u-rune ᚢ has the reconstructed name *Ūruz ("aurochs"). The Anglo-Saxon name and Old Norse name for the rune are phonetically equivelant, both being Ūr, but with completely different senses, being "aurochs" in Old English, but "precipitation" in Old Norse. The Alcuin name for 𐌿 is given as uraz, which doesnt relate well with Old Norse ur for "precipitation", however, it does relate well with the 13th c. Classical Old Norse word for "aurochs": úrr, as the second -r is the equivalent suffix to -az in the Gothic name (cf. 8th c. Old Norse: *ūrʀ, 5th c. Proto-Norse: *ūraʀ, 2nd c. *ūraz), which can then be rolled back as *uruz in Proto-Germanic, with a higher likelyhood of being the original sense.

Elder Futhark

The oldest Runic script is called Elder Futhark and consists of 24 standard characters (a 24-type Futhark) ordered in thirds of 8: fuþarkgw : hnijïpzs : tbemlŋod (or thereof). It is recorded to have been in use with effectively every Proto-Germanic language (East Germanic, West Germanic, North Germanic) around the Roman Iron Age (1–400 AD).

The Goths stopped using the system in the late Roman Iron Age, while the Anglo-Frisians started introducing new runes to the system in the 6th century, becoming its own system.

The Proto-Norse and Proto-Germans continued to use the Elder system, but by the 7th century, the Norse started implementing grammatical updates to it, such as the introduction of a 25th character, a non-nasal ᴀ-rune ᛡ (later becoming the Younger a-rune ᛅ), turning the old a-rune ᚨ into a nasal ą-rune (later becoming the Younger o-rune ᚬ).

The Proto-Germans where probably the last to use an non-updated Elder Futhark, however, late era German finds are few – see Continental runic inscriptions. It dissapeared upon christianization in the mid 8th century.

Gothic alphabet

In the 300s, the East Germanic Goths became christian and switched from runic writing to their own Gothic alphabet derived from the Greek alphabet. This switch might have had a christian motif behind it to some degree, as to get rid of the assumed pagan nature of runes, but at the same time, most runic names were kept for the new Gothic characters, and some runes were even transferred over to fill in the Gothic phonetical table where no suitable Greek derivative was found, specifically the u-rune ᚢ as Gothic 𐌿.

Anglo-Frisian Futhark

In the 400s, Germanic people, specifically Saxons (Low Germans), and Angles (Southern Danes), settled in the British isles, creating the Anglo-Saxons. These carried the Elder Futhark with them to Britain, and eventually developed it further, along with the Frisians on the other side of the English Channel, to suit their new phonetical needs down the line, becomming the 28-type Anglo-Frisian Futhark, more commonly called "Futhorc" per the changes made. The Frisians largely stopped using runes around the 9th century, making the Futhorc largely Anglo-Saxon.

Around this time, probably in York, more runes were introduced, becomming the 32-type Anglo-Saxon Futhark, or Old English Futhark. However, due to the christianization of Britain around the 7th century, the Latin alphabet had already started to usurp the indigenous runes, and by the 10th century, runes are assumed to have been largely obsolete in Britain, appearing sporadically into the 12th century. Despite the long era of Runic use in Britain and Frisia, few finds have been made overall in comparison to Scandinavia.