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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.
Anglo-Saxon runes or Anglo-Frisian runes are runes that were used by the Anglo-Saxons and Medieval Frisians (collectively called Anglo-Frisians) as an alphabet in their native writing system, recording both Old English and Old Frisian (Old English: rūna, ᚱᚢᚾᚪ, "rune").
Valknut variations. On the left unicursal trefoil forms; on the right tricursal linked triangle forms.. The valknut is a symbol consisting of three interlocked triangles.It appears on a variety of objects from the archaeological record of the ancient Germanic peoples.
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 ...
Laguz or *Laukaz is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name of the l-rune ᛚ, *laguz meaning "water" or "lake" and *laukaz meaning "leek". In the Anglo-Saxon rune poem, it is called lagu "ocean". In the Younger Futhark, the rune is called lögr "waterfall" in Icelandic and logr "water" in Norse.
The othala rune is such a case: the o sound in the Anglo-Saxon system is now expressed by ōs ᚩ, a derivation of the old Ansuz rune; the othala rune is known in Old English as ēðel (with umlaut due to the form ōþila-) and is used to express an œ sound, but is attested only rarely in epigraphy (outside of simply appearing in a futhark row).
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 in modern times called an ætt [2] (pl. ættir; meaning 'clan, group', although sometimes thought to mean eight). What the groups were originally called remains unknown.
The vast majority of runestones date to the Viking Age. There is only a handful Elder Futhark (pre-Viking-Age) runestones (about eight, counting the transitional specimens created just around the beginning of the Viking Age). Årstad Stone (390–590 AD) Einang stone (4th century) Tune Runestone (250–400 AD) Kylver Stone (5th century)