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A chart showing 30 Anglo-Saxon runes A rune-row showing variant shapes. The letter sequence and letter inventory of futhorc, along with the actual sounds indicated by those letters, could vary depending on location and time. That being so, an authentic and unified list of runes is not possible.
The j rune was rendered superfluous due to Old Norse sound changes, but was kept with the new sound value of a. The old z rune was kept (transliterated in the context of Old Norse as ʀ) but moved to the end of the rune row in the only change of letter ordering in Younger Futhark. The third ætt was reduced by four runes, losing the e, ŋ, o ...
The Elder Futhark (named after the initial phoneme of the first six rune names: F, U, Þ, A, R and K) has 24 runes, often arranged in three groups of eight runes; each group is called an ætt [2] (pl. ættir; meaning 'clan, group', although sometimes thought to mean eight). In the following table, each rune is given with its common transliteration:
Schretzheim ring-sword: the sword blade has four runes arranged so that the staves form a cross. Read as arab by Düwel (1997). Schwab (1998:378) reads abra, interpreting it as abbreviating the magic word Abraxas, suggesting influence of the magic traditions of Late Antiquity, and the Christian practice of arranging monograms on the arms of a ...
Runes are letters of several related alphabets historically used by various Germanic peoples, including the Norse. [12] In Nordic folklore, runes hold significant cultural and mystical importance. [13] [14] [15] They are often associated with the god Odin, who, according to myth, obtained the knowledge of runes through self-sacrifice. [12]
The name rune itself, taken to mean "secret, something hidden", seems to indicate that knowledge of the runes was originally considered esoteric, or restricted to an elite. [citation needed] The 6th-century Björketorp Runestone warns in Proto-Norse using the word rune in both senses: Haidzruno runu, falahak haidera, ginnarunaz.
The Younger Futhark rune is transliterated as ą to distinguish it from the new ár rune (ᛅ), which continues the jēran rune after loss of prevocalic *j-in Proto-Norse *jár (Old Saxon jār). Since the name of a is attested in the Gothic alphabet as ahsa or aza , the common Germanic name of the rune may thus either have been *ansuz "god", or ...
In addition, Scandinavians began to double spell runes for consonants, influenced by this use in the Latin alphabet. [2] In the oldest Scandinavian manuscripts that were written with Latin letters, the m rune was used as a conceptual rune meaning "man". This suggests that the medieval Scandinavian scribes had a widespread familiarity with the ...