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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").
[1] The runestones are unevenly distributed in Scandinavia: The majority are found in Sweden, estimated at between 1,700 [2] and 2,500 (depending on definition). Denmark has 250 runestones, and Norway has 50. [2] There are also runestones in other areas reached by the Viking expansion, especially in the British Isles. [3]
The actual number was probably considerably higher, maybe close to 400,000 in total, so that on the order of 0.1% of the corpus has come down to us, and Fischer [8] estimates a population of several hundred active literati throughout the period, with as many as 1,600 during the Alamannic "runic boom" of the 6th century.
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:
The medieval runes, or the futhork, was a Scandinavian runic alphabet that evolved from the Younger Futhark after the introduction of stung (or dotted) runes at the end of the Viking Age. These stung runes were regular runes with the addition of either a dot diacritic or bar diacritic to indicate that the rune stood for one of its secondary ...
The Velanda Runestone is inscribed in Old Norse with the Younger Futhark. Above the arch of the runic text band is the outline of an eagle's head facing to the left. [2] The stone was raised by a woman named Þyrvé in memory of her husband Ögmundr. The runic inscription states that he was miok goðan þegn or "a very good thegn". About fifty ...
[8] Þorgísl also contains a god's name as an element and means "Thor's Hostage." [9] The Lund 1 Runestone was discovered in the ruins of a monastery in 1682, [4] where it had apparently been re-used as material in the construction of that building. Before the historic significance of runestones was understood, they were often used as ...