Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.įind sources: 'Anglo-Saxon runes' – news Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. This article needs additional citations for verification. That being so, an authentic and unified list of runes is not possible. The letter sequence and letter inventory of futhorc, along with the actual sounds indicated by those letters, could vary depending on location and time. Letters A chart showing 30 Anglo-Saxon runes A rune-row showing variant shapes A leading expert, Raymond Ian Page, rejects the assumption often made in non-scholarly literature that runes were especially associated in post-conversion Anglo-Saxon England with Anglo-Saxon paganism or magic. The coffin is also an example of an object created at the heart of the Anglo-Saxon church that uses runes. Several famous English examples mix runes and Roman script, or Old English and Latin, on the same object, including the Franks Casket and St Cuthbert's coffin in the latter, three of the names of the Four Evangelists are given in Latin written in runes, but 'LUKAS' ( Saint Luke) is in Roman script. From at least five centuries of use, fewer than 200 artifacts bearing futhorc inscriptions have survived. By the time of the Norman Conquest of 1066 it was very rare, and it disappeared altogether a few centuries thereafter. In some cases, texts would be written in the Latin alphabet, and þorn and ƿynn came to be used as extensions of the Latin alphabet. Runic writing in England became closely associated with the Latin scriptoria from the time of Anglo-Saxon Christianization in the 7th century. In England, outside of the Brittonic Westcountry where evidence of Latin and even Ogham continued for several centuries, usage of the futhorc expanded. The double-barred ᚻ hægl characteristic of continental inscriptions is first attested as late as 698, on St Cuthbert's coffin before that, the single-barred variant was used. The earliest known instances of the ᚪ āc rune may be from the 6th century, appearing on objects such as the Schweindorf solidus. The earliest known instance of the ᚩ ōs rune may be from the 5th-century, on the Undley bracteate. This was done to account for the new phoneme produced by the Ingvaeonic split of allophones of long and short a. The early futhorc was nearly identical to the Elder Futhark, except for the split of ᚨ a into three variants ᚪ āc, ᚫ æsc and ᚩ ōs, resulting in 26 runes. Both theories have their inherent weaknesses, and a definitive answer may come from further archaeological evidence. Another holds that runes were first introduced to Britain from the mainland where they were then modified and exported to Frisia.

One theory proposes that it was developed in Frisia and from there later spread to Britain. There are competing theories about the origins of the Anglo-Saxon futhorc.

The left half of the front panel of the 7th century Franks Casket, depicting the Germanic legend of Weyland Smith and containing a riddle in Anglo-Saxon runes.

Elder futhark runes and meanings