Runes and the Origins of Writing Read online

  ARKTOS

  London 2018

  Copyright © 2018 by Arktos Media Ltd.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means (whether electronic or mechanical), including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  ISBN

  978-1-912079-11-7 (Print)

  978-1-912079-10-0 (Ebook)

  Translation

  Jean Bernard

  Editing

  Martin Locker and Melissa Mészáros

  Design

  Tor Westman

  Arktos.com | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

  Dedicated to François-Xavier Dillmann.

  Part I

  F

  U

  Q

  a

  R

  k

  g

  W

  f

  u

  þ

  a

  r

  k

  g

  w

  h

  n

  i

  j

  $

  p

  y

  Ø

  h

  n

  i

  j

  ë

  p

  z(R)

  s

  t

  B

  e

  m

  l

  5

  d

  o

  t

  b

  e

  m

  l

  ng

  d

  o

  The older runic “alphabet” (Fuþark),

  comprising twenty-four letters grouped into three “ættir.”

  F

  U

  Q

  a

  R

  ß

  f

  u

  þ

  ą

  r

  k

  J

  n

  i

  N

  S

  h

  n

  i

  a

  s

  t

  B

  l

  y

  7

  t

  b

  l

  m

  R

  The modern fuþark, 16 letters.

  1

  Writing and Oral Tradition

  “Any conception of culture that would designate the propensity to write as an indicator of a culture’s wealth and complexity should be discarded,” writes Eric A. Havelock. “A culture can rely entirely on some kind of spoken communication and nevertheless be a culture with all that it entails.”1

  That preliminary remark is useful in understanding why there is no common Indo-European term to refer to writing, in spite of the early development of several writing systems by ancient Near-Eastern cultures for administrative and utilitarian purposes. The Indo-European tradition is indeed essentially oral, and most Indo-European people seem to have voluntarily ignored writing, in its contemporary sense. Bernard Sergent describes that “singular phenomenon” as follows:

  Writing is not categorically rejected, but it is put to the side to prioritize orality which comes first and foremost. In all ancient Indo-European cultures, or almost all of them, there is that rejection or marginalization, its use is very specific. It is that way because writing has an ambiguous status: on the one hand it has cons, written culture is perceived by those people to be of inferior quality compared to spoken culture […] but on the other hand it has pros, as writing is also perceived to be somewhat magical because it makes things last and popularizes them.2

  It is worth remembering that last point.

  That is why writing plays no part in Vedic religion. The Brahmins’ role is to preserve the Vedas by reciting the text and learning it by heart to keep the oral transmission going. The sacred scriptures of the Indo-Aryan culture are a revelation confided to the ear, literally a “hearing” (shruti). While the Brahmin tradition exalts the strength of the spoken word (the very name of the Brahmins comes from bráhman “poetic spell”), it neglects scriptural activities, but it does not mean that they are ignored. In the Veda language, there is no verbal root for “the act of writing.” In the Sanskrit vocabulary, the term for “letter” (verna) originally meant a kind of sound, it was a phonetics term. The earliest Sanskrit manuscripts only date from the 5th century [Editor’s Note: All dates are AD unless specified], with their Asoka chancellery inscriptions. The Vedas, which have been transmitted orally for at least 4000 years, have only been written down in the 18th century.

  In Iran, the Avesta had also only been written down in the Sassanid period. The Celts shared the druidic teachings exclusively orally (this is why there are no remains of it). Arbois de Jubainville writes about druids from Gaul that “we know that their teaching comprised making their students learn by heart a long didactic poem that they sang and that was actually memorized correctly by some students only after twenty years of studying.”3 Cesar also emphasized the hostility which druids showed when they were told to write down their knowledge:

  novice druids learned a lot of verses; many of them study for over twenty years; they don’t think their religion allows the writing down of verses (neque fas esse existimant eas litteris mandare) but they do use Greek letters for all kinds of public and private uses.4

  Christian J. Guyonvarc’h, according to whom the conversion to Christianism implied a conversion to the written tradition, tells us that “there are no native words in any Celtic language for the act of writing or reading.”5 He adds that there is no ancient Celtic epigraphy for the regions far from the Mediterranean, as well as no writings in Gaulish in north-eastern Gaul. The Celtic name for writing (Old-Irish: scrib-) comes from Latin scribo. In Scandinavia, the skalds’ art had also been transmitted orally for a long time.

  Plutarch said about Numa that, according to him, “it was wrong to preserve religious secrets in inanimate letters,” which explains why he was thought to be the father of an “‘unwritten tradition’ by Rome.”6 So too thought Pythagoras (“religious secrets should not be entrusted to inert things”) and Lycurgus, the legendary lawgiver of Sparta, who made never the writing of laws a constitutional principle.7

  The importance of oral tradition must be kept in mind when one delves into writing.

  2

  Runic Writing

  Runic writing is the writing system that was used to transcribe different Germanic languages before the Latin script, and then alongside it. It seems to have appeared roughly in the 1st century AD and it was still used up to the 14th century, when it began to fall out of use. However, it was still used marginally in the 17th and 18th centuries in some parts of the Swedish and Norwegian countryside (Dalarna, Härjedalen, Telemark, Gotland, etc.) Its oldest variety comprises twenty-four signs or runes which form an “alphabet” which was given the name Fuþark (“Futhark”) because of its particular order. Those twenty-four runes, materialized by vertical or oblique strokes, transcribe twenty-four sounds or phonemes. The Fuþark comprises eighteen consonants and six vowels. Runes in the available body of inscriptions manifest a striking unity. Most of them are almost always the same; there are only minor variations and they rarely are isolated.

  The former Fuþark that had twenty-four signs stopped being used in the 8th century. A new Fuþark reduced to sixteen signs appeared in the beginning of the 9th century in the Danish isles and in southern Sweden.8 That was the one used in the so-called Viking era. We know of three main variations: the “long stroke rune
s,” the “short stroke runes” and the “Norwegian (ancient) runes.” The transition from the old to the new sixteen-rune Fuþark is one of the most talked about issues of runology.9 Did it happen through a voluntary reform or was it rather a progressive evolution? Some specialists simply don’t believe that the new Fuþark comes from the old. Some others accept the derivation but they explain it through other means. There’s a disagreement between the upholders of the “utilitarian” hypothesis and those of the strictly linguistic theory. The former think that the “reform” comes strictly from a wish to simplify, which is quite dubious; the latter claim that it is the result of phonetic disruptions that affected the Proto-Scandinavian system. Lastly, some suggest (without any precise argument) a desire to make the Fuþark more incomprehensible in the age of the first Christian missions. René L. M. Derolez writes that

  that reform could not have been introduced for practical purposes: reading the new alphabet is much harder than reading the old one, because many sounds can’t be expressed accurately by the new one. It may be a reaction against Christianism, which was making an entrance at the boundaries of Scandinavia. It was precisely when Charlemagne got his armies to the borders of Denmark. That pending danger could have provoked a revival of the pagan culture.10

  Since we are studying the origins of runic writing, we are only interested in the Old Fuþark, not the sixteen signs one nor the other runic writing systems that were confirmed later on, like the twenty-eight sign Anglo-Saxon Fuþorc that was developed in the British Isles after the Angles, Jutes and Saxons’ invasion, the Frisian system, the Fuþorc used around 800 in Northumbria and in north-western England, the pointed runes, the Rök runes, the Hälsingland runes, the medieval Fuþark, etc.

  3

  The Characteristics of Fuþark

  Compared to other writings from western Europe, runic writing has some notable features that must be taken into account to determine its origins. The first one is the order of the letters within the “alphabet.” Fuþark is called Fuþark because its first letters are f, u, þ (th), a, r, k, then g, w, n, i, j, ï, p, z (or R), s, t, b, e, m, l, ŋ (ng), d and o. So, the order is totally different from the order of Mediterranean alphabets. Specialists notice it but seldom try to explain it. “There is no theory that has ever been put out that can satisfy the needs of linguists when it comes to explaining why the Germans chose that particular sequence,” explains Terje Spurkland.11

  Fifteen runic inscriptions give us all or almost all of the Fuþark in its canonical order. Almost all of them date back to the 5th or 6th century. The oldest one is the one from the Kylver stone, found in 1903 in its tomb in Gotland, which seems to date back to the beginning of the 5th century (c. 400). The Grumpan bracteate (c. 475–500), found in 1911 in Västergötland, gives us a complete Fuþark that is two letters short of being identical to that found on the Kylver stone. Another Swedish bracteate, the Vadstena bracteate (c. 550), found in 1774 in Östergötland, bears a similar sequence but it reads from right to left starting at the support hole, whereas the Grumpan bracteate reads from left to right. The fibula of Charnay (Saône-et-Loire), found in 1858 and dating back to c. 580, bears an incomplete Fuþark for lack of space. The fibula with golden silver from Aquincum in Hungary (c. 500) gives us the first eight runes. There is also the inscription (c. 535) discovered in 1930 on a marble column of a Byzantine church from Breza, twenty-two kilometers northwest of Sarajevo, the Beuchte fibula found near Goslar, the Lindkær bracteate (Denmark), etc.

  Another very important characteristic — probably the most important — is the division of Fuþark letters. Runes don’t form a continuous sequence like the Greek or Latin scripts, but they are grouped together into three eight-letter long immutable sequences (From F to W, from h to S, from t to o). That is confirmed by the bracteates of Grumpan and Vadstena. They show the complete Fuþark sequence divided up into three eight-letter groups, separated by six lined-up dots (Grumpan) or two dots, one on top of the other (Vadstena). Those three runic sequences are called ættir (singular ætt). That denomination can be found in a 17th century Icelandic text, but also in an 11th century manuscript (Isruna-Traktat). That term, which means “a whole made of eight parts,” is a *ti- derivative from *ahta which means “eight” in German (see Old High German ahti- “eight,” Old Norse átta, same meaning). The fact that it is a homophone with ætt “family” (geschlecht) seems fortuitous: ætt comes from *aih-ti which means “property” in German, and its verbal basis is aih “I own” (see aihts in Gothic). In Icelandic manuscripts from the 17th century, every ætt is under the authority of a god: Freyr (Frøys ætt, which begins with the F = f rune), Heimdallr (Hagals ætt, which begins with the h = h rune) and Týr (Týs ætt, which begins with the t = t rune), but this patronage may have been added post hoc. The fact that the ættir groupings were kept in the sixteen sign Fuþark gives us reasons to believe that it goes back to the origins of the system and that it was regarded as traditional.

  Runic writing is also acrophonic, meaning that every rune bears its own name, and its phonetic value is determined by the first phoneme of its name.12 Every rune follows that acrophonic principle except runes fifteen and twenty-two, z/R (y) and ŋ (5), whose phonemes are never the first when spoken; then, the rune bears the name of the last phoneme. The names of runes are always singular. Even when the form of the rune changes, the name stays the same. The first rune’s sound, /f/, is associated to the word *fehu, which refers to cattle or wealth (Old Norse fē, Gothic faihu). That term is derived from the Indo-European term *péku, which turned into pecus in Latin (see “pecuniary”). Then came *ūruz “aurochs,” *þurisaz “giant,” *ansuz “Asa” (ferula), *raidō “ride,” etc. That characteristic indicates that Fuþark letters might have been initially some pictographic signs that depicted figuratively the word according to its meaning. Then, the pictograms could have lost their figurative value and become but the sign of the first letter of the word they used to depict figuratively.

  Since no runic inscription gave us the names of runes, we got them thanks to fairly recent documents (the oldest ones date back to the 9th century), but their consistency confirms how ancient and stable the names are.13 Lucien Musset stresses that “there is a substantial consistency among all the nomenclatures, which gives us reason to believe that they share fairly old origins.”14 He adds that “the runes got their names at a time when the Germanic world was still unanimously pagan and relatively united.”15

  The names of runes are mentioned in several manuscripts from the Middle Ages (called Runica manuscripta) and four great runic poems.16 The oldest one is the Abecedarium Normanicum or Nord (mannicum), a text written in Fulda between 801 and 819 at Rabanus Maurus’ school (780–856) in a mix of Low German, High German, Anglo-Saxon and Norse. It relates the sixteen runes of the new Fuþark and gives their names in alliterative verses: “Feu forman, / Ur after, / Thuris thritten stabu,” etc. Then there is the Old English runic poem from the 9th century, the Norwegian runic poem from the end of the 12th century or beginning of the 13th, and the Icelandic runic poem written at most around 1400. The Old English poem was burned in 1731 but its text was saved by a 1731 copy constituted by John Hickes (Thesaurus I). That poem gives us the names of the twenty-eight runes of the Anglo-Saxon Fuþorc. The Norwegian poem was also burned in a fire in 1728, but we hold copies of it and that gives us the names of the sixteen runes of the new Fuþark. The Icelandic Poem also gives us the names of the sixteen rune Fuþark under the kenningar form, a kind of paraphrasal frequently used in skaldic poetry. The names of runes that were missing from the sixteen sign Fuþark have been figured out from a manuscript attributed to Alcuin of Salzburg-Vienna. It dates back to the 9th century and it has Gothic sources.

  The last characteristic: since its origins, runic writing can be written from left to right, from right to left, from bottom to top, from top to bottom, in vertical or horizontal lines. It can also be written in boustrophedon mode (meaning that it changes directions at every line like ox
en in ploughing). The oldest inscriptions are more often from right to left, while those from the Viking days are mostly from left to right. That detail is important when it comes to finding the origins of runic writing.

  4

  Runic Inscriptions

  We have come across 6900 runic inscriptions, and most of them, upwards of 6000, were found in Scandinavia (4000 in Sweden, 1600 in Norway, 850 in Denmark). inscriptions carved in the Old Fuþark, numbering no more than 360, are the oldest, and 250 of them were found in Scandinavia, especially in southern Sweden, Jutland, Schleswig, and the Danish Isles (Zealand and Funen). The famous Golden Horns of Gallehus that date back to the 4th century or the first half of the 5th century, discovered in 1639 and 1734 in Denmark near Tondern, are the oldest runic “monument” that we know of. The oldest engraved stone is the one from Möjebro. It seems to date from around 400. New runic inscriptions are discovered regularly and they have been published since 1986 in the Norwegian paper Nytt om runer. Meldingsblad om runeforskning (it is a digital publication since 2005).

  Older inscriptions are usually very short and hard to decipher. Many of them seem to be some people’s names. Only around fifty of them are longer than a couple of words, if they even are words. Out of the 121 old Fuþark inscriptions that we can make sense of, seventy-nine are only one line long, forty-four are written from left to right, and thirty-five from right to left. Out of the forty-two that are longer than a line, twenty-four are written in the same direction, and eighteen are written both from left to right and from right to left.

  Half of those inscriptions are written on bracteates. Bracteates are thin golden disks with a hole pierced through them so that they can be worn around the neck as pendants. One of their sides bear a decoration, and they were used as jewels, but mostly as amulets. They started being produced around 450. Some of the C type bracteates, the most common type (we know of at least 400 of them), could depict the god Ódhinn, sometimes with his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir, or with his two ravens, Hugin and Munin. Upwards of a hundred bracteates bear a runic inscription.17