Runes: Letters, Not Symbols
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- čas přidán 28. 08. 2024
- The term "rune" is often wrongly thrown around as if it applied to sigils like Vegvísir, or as if each rune were a symbol for a concept rather than a letter in an alphabet.
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Krister Vasshus's thread on the recent discovery of what might be the oldest known text written in runes: twitter.com/KristerVasshus/status/1615236531689607169 My video covering the basic facts, and my first impressions, about the new find: czcams.com/video/X_m2xcoU9Q0/video.html And my video covering the controversy over the runes' origin: czcams.com/video/YBoFjhNwziY/video.html
My last comment was asking you about "COLORADO GUN BAN"...
I gotta say congratulations, for getting another puzzle piece of history.
I can't read it 😞
I'd just like to say I randomly write long words like that just practicing. I like to write with the runes sometimes and I'll just write gibberish to practice my form with my calligraphy pen
@@riddick7082What people forget when looking at where Futharks was used is that modern borders is often not the ones back then.
@@robertfaucher3750WHICH Futhark? Saying you write Runes is like saying you write in Letters instead of saying "I write in German".
I like to imagine that a thousand years from now some people will discover the NATO phonetic alphabet on Space Wikipedia and start sticking random letters on stuff, saying "H is called Hotel and represents hospitality, R is called Romeo and represents love, P is called Papa and represents fatherhood..."
Absolutely 100% correct, this made me laugh because of how accurate it is. Great comment.
Now you mention it, the phonetic alphabet would be a great set of correspondences for spell craft 🤔🙂
@@segbaillie2824 Cf. the use of Hebrew in occultish circles.
ROFLMAO
"C is called Charlie and represents chocolate factories and unicorns.
O is called Oscar and represents fameous actors and grumpy people who love trash.
Q is called Quebec and represents maple leaves and syrup.
X is called x-ray and represents radiation and infertility.
M is called Mike and represents my uncle...."
As a 72 year old Swede I have never ever contemplated the possibility that runes were anything else than letters! It wasn't until I started follow Jackson's channel I realised that some people saw the runes as symbols.
That changed for me (a 37 year old Belgian) when I learned about the SS's botched attempt to rewrite history and to use runes as part of their faux-religion. Othala was definitely not just a letter to them and subsequently, to others.
Honestly, I never heard about that before following this channel. Clearly though, it must be common thought in some circles.
Same here from a somewhat younger Swede. They’re just letters, and I don’t understand why they would be considered magical in and of themselves.
I suspect that the idea of runes having magic power may stem from the antiquarian/mystic/scientists Johannes Bureus who was born in the mid-1500s.
He was one of the first to study rune inscriptions, but was also obsessed with cabalistic and other esoteric ideas in general. He wrote down his beliefs that some runes held particular power. Even in his own time, many didn’t take his esoteric ideas about runes seriously, but it seems like some modern people still do.
Agree
Also, a consideration I have is the oldest use of the word rune itself to mean secret, or counsel, perhaps with "magical" connotations, but not in the sense of the letters themselves. Such as the runot (or RUNOs in english) of the Kalevala.
For example, i wonder if that's what it means in Havamal, when Oðinn gets the [18] runes, if it means secrets, or "spells" not the letters used to write them. He then lists 18 secrets immediately afterwards, potentially what he retrieved. You can see a similar line of thought with the english term [magic] spell. You SPELL things with letters.
This is a subject that comes up so often at the Jorvik Centre, so many people are so desperate for runes to be inherently magical in nature rather than a mechanism through which magic might be carried out. Glad you've addressed it so effectively.
I am appreciative of your up to the minute coverage! It is exciting to experience something hidden hundreds of years ago unveiling so dramatically in the present day!
It's funny you say this because I read Runes, I cast Runes but this whole time I always thought of Runes as letters.
The first contact I had with 'runes' was RuneScape (in 2010, by age 12), in which 'runes' are not letters but just magical vessels. Then I discovered Tolkien (in 2014), in whose work there is a Runic-style script (in which the Norse F-rune sounds like a G -- Gandalf's symbol). Only quite a lot later, maybe as an adult, I really understood historical Runes or where they come from.
Keep in mind I'm Brazilian. There are no runes anywhere in Latin heritage, so all my contact with runes was through essentially English means. Most other people I know either have no idea what a rune is, or knoe them as magical force from RuneScape or Elden Ring.
The Romans used abbreviations a lot too. A bunch of carvings just use "M" to abbreviate Marcus, for instance, such as on the front of the Pantheon. That doesn't mean an "M" actually meant "Marcus" necessarily, or that the Romans associated that letter with that name always. "M" meant the sound of a letter to them just like it does to us.
BY YMIR'S FROSTY BEARD that is so awesome that you got to arrange an interview with one of the scholars.
Thank you so much!
I have a distant friend who is a Wiccan. I remember her trying to explain runes and what they mean in her religion (this was before I was even remotely interested anything scandavian or viking related), even then, I was like "...or they can just be letters"
@UCW4nY6whMXZnbNq2Bo1QDMQ that's not surprising since any religion is like that. Have different minor beliefs or methods of worship under the same religion. But Wiccans typically only worship two deities that chance phases per season that stem from European magical methods/beliefs. From what I gathered from my friend, witch folk use the nordic runes to help predict the future like my friend or sigil making, which to each their own! To me, it's just a cool looking alphebet lol
That's what happens when you play pretend, knowing nothing about traditions you claim to be resurrecting as an angst ridden teenager, and then try to get serious.
That's because Wicans appropriate and not appreciate the runes.
Well they are letters firstly but lets not pretend there isn't more to them.
Each letter has a name, and there are plenty of mentions of how these letters are used as some kind of good luck thing.
Like the TTT for Tyr for good luck in battle. It's not as simple as 'just letters'. But they are letters in the first place, yes.
@@cynthiadollar9163 To be more accurate Victorian Age Occultist white washed and appropriated them and since the guy who invented Wicca to begin with drew inspiration from Victorian Age Occultist when forming his new religion he used them in the same way as his sources.
Runes are letters not logograms.
As you've said, the closest we get to that sort of magical symbolism are words in abbreviations or acrostics - and, I'll add, at a stretch in bindrunes or concealed in løyndrunes but *only* when the underlying words themselves have some sort of magical meaning.
Great video again Jackson, I think this is a great summary for those of us interested in historically accurate usage of the proto-germanic alphabets of old norse, old english, etc.
There are some people you'll never convince, as their interest lies in how runes support their own belief system. I don't think their interested in hearing that it's an old writing system that has been repurposed centuries later.
But... letters can be used logographically. for example: greek letters are used for numbers, latin letters are used for musical notation. etc. etc. People come up with new uses for letters all the time. They could easily be logograms.
just saying "runes are not logograms" is false. And if you say "runes were not used as logograms in the prechristian era of the elder futhark" that is a bold claim.
how can you be so sure?
While we should certainly understand what people thought of these symbols in their own time, and not attribute anything to them that isn't evidenced, that shouldn't diminish the fact that people later on, or today, or far in the future might attribute something to them.
It might seem a silly comparison, but in some circles online, though a meme, and given the proper context, "F" can mean "pay respects". One can also 'take the L". Language is always alive, living through those who use it. The ultimate meme, completely inescapable.
Your statement has even more validity when considering the ancient Greek interpretation of the word meme.
I once was teaching English and social studies to a homeschool group and while we were learning about medieval times, I had the kids write a message using the younger futhark. After that, I got a message from one of the moms who is something of a hippie and she was all excited that I had been teaching her kids about runes and wanted to have a discussion about the "meaning" of the runes. I was like, umm well, it's like an alphabet? I have no other knowledge about the "meaning" other than the sounds that they represent. She was pretty disappointed that I didn't want to talk astrology or whatever. 😂
The more I learn, the more I love it. Absolutely fascinating. Thanks Jackson!
THANK YOU! It's so nice to see people throw out common sense about the ancient world and tiny things like runes and other bits and bobs.
I suspect that reading and writing was a lot more common than we realise. The fact memorial stones as almost entirely writing rather than images hints that the long winter nights were a great time to learn.
Indeed. What's the point of writing a memorial to your father on a runestone unless people are going to understand what you've written?
As much as in antiquity. There seems to be an influential belief that people of old had no free time at all left from their hard work on the fields etc.; which is very unlikely from a psychological standpoint, since no human wants to work 24/7. Then, I understand if in China for instance the basic countryside people do not want to make efforts about learning a writing system that is extremely unfriendly to learners, in that enormous capacity of memory is needed and the acquisition is very exhausting and psychologically everything but thankful. Whereas, any writing culture with an either letter or syllable alphabet offers learners very easily accessible tools. Learning about 25 tokens is not hard at all. So, yes, I do believe that we underestimate the presence and relevance of reading and also writing for the Ancients, the European Middle Ages of Roman heritage as well as the Northern Middle Ages.
@@arweninnj I get your point, but it would also seem logical if the inscriptions on memorial stones were entirely oriented towards other high-ranking members of society, meant to display and signal status and power to those few people who were certainly literate (or at least had people working for them who were).
Well, think of this possibility.
Egyptian common folk used shards of pottery to scratch notes on because they did not have wood.
Our ancestors had LOTS of wood and thus common rune carvings in wood (and bone) is likely in my opinion.
But unfortunately these are materials that perish quickly.
Iirc we even got slander and basically what amounts to shitposting in carved runic. Maybe it wasn't so magical after all, and more like how we use the internet?
Another great mix of fact, well thought out insight and self deprecating humor. The quality content that keeps me coming back.
Well I for one forget to hit "next" on purpose. I love learning about this stuff.
It may well be M R James who is to blame, but then he was a damned good medieval scholar in his day, he just happened to write exceedingly good fiction as well. My introduction to Runes was via the M R James "casting of the runes" and Tolkein's "the Lord of the Rings" in my teens they were scary things you wrote curses in :)
The letters in the Glagolitic and Cyrilic alphabet used to have names: "az", "buki", "vedi", "glagoli", "dobro", which can be translated to: "I", "letters", "knew", "spoke", "good". But the letters were just that - letters. They only represented sounds, never the words, that were used for their names. I wonder why the letters had names to begin with - probably just to make it easier for students to learn them.
Anyway, apparently it is normal to give names to letters, without using the letters for anything else.
Brilliant video as always, sir. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and perspective with us!
I don’t mind if people want to “adopt” runes, and assign metaphysical significance to the individual runes as part of their modern metaphysical traditions. Well, I mean. I do mind if they’re doing it for hateful or harmful purposes (i.e. runes do not belong to Nazis, those sh*theads).
But some folks practicing some sort of innocuous animistic or nature worship, and using the runes as “magic” symbols as part of their tradition? Sure, that’s fine.
I just don’t like it when they assert that the “runes as magical individual symbols” portion of their tradition has a basis in history. Like you said, we don’t know that, and there’s insufficient evidence to date to suggest that they did. If we learn more with new discoveries, and that changes, great! I’m always open to new evidence. But it’s not there right now.
So, sure. Use ‘em for “magic”, I don’t care (unless you’re hurting people). Just don’t lay claim to their history.
Goose Rabbit Egg Apple Turtle Violin Igloo Dog Egg Ostrich! Turtle Hand Apple Nose Kite Snake!
"fehu means money, or cattle"
... and I learned from Simon Roper that the modern word "fee" comes from Old English "feoh", which likewise means money or cattle (interchangeable concepts to the Angles and Saxons). It's cool, though unsurprising I suppose, when these things line up.
FÄ (fae) still means cattle in Scandinavia.
And capitalism comes from capita, the head (as in captain, the head of something), as original capitalism was about your herd.
@@Anderssea69 "vee" in Dutch!
"Pecuniae," to the Romans, were cattle and also meant wealth. That word probably came from the same root. To us, "pecuniary" is about money.
@@Anderssea69 Similarly, the German word Vieh means livestock
9:51 On the topic of churchmen also doing a lot of legal/treasury admin in the early middle ages, it's unsurprising to find "cleric" and "clerk" are essentially the same word, both derived from Greek "klerikos", via latin "clericus"
No! They aren't! Having the same origin doesn't mean they are the same. Not even essentially.
@@rursus8354 In this case, they are specifically considered doublets, according to the Wiktionary entry. Consider that a "clerical error" means an error made by a clerk or office worker. It's simple to look up the adjective "clerical" and see that it applies to both clerks and clergy.
Patron here, suggesting a topic and commenting for the sake of the algorithm. To the extent there are written sources you are aware of (and I am thinking of things like the stories of Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir in Laxdæla saga), I'd be interested in learning more about the pre-Christian viking era conception of "marriage" and family affairs. What I have seen on my own has been poorly sourced and tended to suggest that divorces were easily effected (almost informally) which may be true. It is possible some of my confusion stems from changes in the family unit across time, and especially across the pagan/Christian divide.
I got familiar with runes from their interpretation in terms of magic, a few years later got a tattoo of them, and only now do I realize that the thing is not authentic or clever in any way. So now I'm looking for ways to correct the thing, building a vegsivir or bracelets or something. But I'm looking forward to finding interesting verses in the poetic Edda for inspiration.
Hahahahaha that’s what you get for not doing your research. Live with you nonsensical mistake!
Vägvisare isn't "authentic" either, if you mean in norse context. It is a later icelandic christian superstition from the 1800s
@@TitaniusAnglesmith It is a similar situation with the Kolovrat which many people think is an ancient Slavic symbol but in reality it first showed up in an artists sketch in 1920. Vägvisare is a cool symbol with an interesting meaning though.
Dr. Crawford, Regarding the names of the runes: The Codex Vindobonensis 795 provides these names. We know therefore these rune names were known by the late 700's and earlier since we can safely assume that Alcuin did not make these up on the spot. If the names are taken from the rune poems as you suggest, then are the rune poems themselves older than we think?
there are also the names of the Gothic alphabet which, although we do not have the letter names from when the gothic alphabet was written we have them from a bit later and they are strongly etymologically connected with the names of the runes.
Couldn't they be both? For instance, the Hebrew alphabet is a series of letters, but they are also descendants of pictographs. So the letters kept their original pictographic meaning but were mostly functionally used as an alphabet. That's not unique to Hebrew either
Quite interesting; the Oracle Bone Script of ancient China also has a distinctly angular shape because it is inscribed in a hard material, and I think there are also examples of nonsense texts that represent scribbles made by training scribes. They get this impression because sometimes there's a master's example on one side, and a trainee's imitation on the other side; the hand sets them apart. If I'm not mistaken, practice work also occurs in Cuneiform texts. I wonder if some of these mysterious Runic inscriptions could also be practice work.
"... speak of me, and I appear too, so... watch out for that." (15:20)
Me: *gets up from my chair, walks out my backdoor, tilts head back, inhales deeply* "OLD NORSE SPECIALIST DR. JACKSON CRAWFORD!"
My neighbour: "Hey, lad lige være med at råbe, ikke?"
Runes were absolutely used for magical purposes as well as being letters in an alphabet. Letters and writing in general being considered magical is pretty common among ancient cultures.
This is like 50% of the video.
He said they were used for magical purposes. He just said they didn't attribute magic to the symbols themselves other than being a vehicle for the words.
I bought some runes recently & just saw your video on the meaning of the rune letters.
...what I got from this is if I light a candle and say "Dr. Jackson Crawford" in a mirror, you'll appear.
XD
Thank you agein Crawford! Its really interesting to watch youre videos. Am learning alot and it helps me getting to know my historic visdom. Keep up the good work mr.
I appreciate this video because I know almost nothing about runes but every now and then I’ll stumble on some person talking about their “deep meanings” as symbols and so on and I’ve always suspected it was bullshit of some sort. Nice to know that’s pretty much the case.
You speaking about what people considered as magic reminds me of a film I saw once called The Navigator, A Medieval Odyssey. It had a very authentic feeling about people's beliefs during the time of the plague. It's quite an interesting watch - if you can still find a copy of it (probably video cassette).
Love your work, and you are appreciated more than you may know
Early literacy being seen as special and particularly mystical would also help explain why there are so many decorative pieces where the primary inscription is just a runic alphabet (Vadstena Bracteate, Seax of Beagnoth), as it would be a way of effectively wearing your literacy as a sign of social status.
And for what it's worth, the story of Othinn sacrificing himself to himself to learn about the runes strikes me as a people who've forgotten where their written language comes from and making a creation myth for it.
Book of Thoth
I have a distinct memory of Jackson Crawford saying new evidence was found that showed how Heimdallr was born. That each mother gave birth to one part of him. There was also an interview with a Scandinavian expert in that video. I can't seem to find it. This must've been about 4-5 years ago. Did I imagine it?
Hello, I've been listening and appreciating your videos for a few years and I have a question: do you think that your knowledge and skills in Old Norse/ancient north-european languages influence the way you speak and pronounce modern English (in the way you pronounce the [w] kind of sounds, for exemple)?
He's said that comes from old members of his family.
It is not that the letter has a magical meaning, it is that the letter's intended meaning becomes like a mantra for focusing the will of the person toward the magic they intend.
"This stands for 'a'"
"what does it mean?"
"A is for alligator"
🐊
YES and Apple
Another interesting video, JC! Have you made a video on galdrastafir, by the way? If not, I would love to see and hear your take on that :)
Modern rune-symbolism is an example of cultural appropriation. It is an adoption and ignorant reinterpretation of an element of one culture by members of another culture. In this case when early Scandinavian culture was appropriated by late 19th century esoteric ethnonationalism and later on by modern popular culture. The element of ignorance becomes obvious when people are seen looking for explanations in the wrong place, and in the wrong time period.
Thank you for the video, Jackson. I actually do a daily rune reading on YT, and I think, at least as of this posting, I am the only one who does so. I try to remind people that rune stones, as a diviniation tool, are really just our accepted general understanding of the meaning of the runes, but, in of themselves, they have no meaning without that human intention. The runes, as cast, mean what we've agreed for them to mean. This divination approach could be applied to anything, really, like bananas or orange peels. Some runes, like Perthro, have no agreed meaning although most people will assign "luck" or "unknown" to it. In different traditions like witchcraft or Wicca, I think there are additional meanings to each stone whereas I try to apply a lot of different accepted meanings and combine the most common denominators. I can't say for sure, as I don't follow either of those traditions. The stones, as you are say, are not magical on their own. I don't perform magic, and so, for me, they are simply a meditation tool using a generally accepted understanding of the meaning of the rune. In any case, it's interesting to hear the history. Thank you.
Very interesting. Knowledge that I didn't know I needed. Thanks for sharing.
Without your suggestion of an acrostic, I instinctively tried to interpret the 8As sequence as directions ala some of the suggested theories of quipu interpretation
If your paper is a twig, and your pen in a knife, then runes are the perfect alphabet.
Yeah or piece of birch bark or stone. That's why Runes work for this type of scribing materials very well.
@@SeleneSalvatore Building on what you've said, an interesting observation to be made when looking at the runes (especially the elder futhark) is that there are (almost) no horizontal lines in the runic alphabet, which must've helped when writing on a piece of bark or wood. If the wood starts to crack you can still interpret the rune without being confused about which rune's been written.
How many times do I have to call your name to get it right? I thought I'd speed up transportation in case you wanted to pop by the museum and see the new inscriptions tomorrow. ^,^
But on a more serious note, I'm glad people at least have a way of having their myths dispelled. "Viking" stuff in various media can be a bit irksome for me at times, and probably confusing/misinforming for others.
On reading this video's title, my first thought was "Fish are friends, not food." :-D
is it possible that 18:00 is mabey a old nordic riddle? and mabey this was a way of writing it in a kind of short hand to save writing the whole descriptor?
or were riddles not really a thing back then?
Maybe the amulet inscription is an ale recipe?
Take 8 units of F, 3 units of Y and 3 units of t
Do whatever BMN means
Ferment for T time units.
I remember seeing graffiti in runes on a broch in Scotland where they had a translation on the sign and it was just graffiti.. Something like "Hilda has a big pair" ( a little more explicitly)
so I don't think it was all high class people writing back then.... Plus I think it even had the classic, "I was here" stuff.
.
This sounds to me as if the users of runes used their names pretty much exactly as we do the NATO alphabet? When you're using the NATO alphabet, the word Golf is in some sense the "name" of the letter G, but it doesn't impart any meaning - G doesn't in any way *mean* "golf".
Lima Oscar Lima
We still do that in English, kay means, k, bee means b, zed means z.
*blink* *blink* I did not realize until he was contrasting it with ancient magic, but Harry Potter's magic system is actually extremely scientific, a repeatable experiment with predictable results, versus something more overarchingly symbolic, like the Power Focus Effect trio from the Librarians. It also reminds me of the Egyptian / Greek dichotomy in Pyramid Scheme
17:40 quite possibly could have been someone practicing carving those runes.
Yeah, I wondered about the 'pot hooks' possiblity 🤔
It's the equivalent of the back of my grade 7 maths homework when I just write the same letters over and over
*gets flashbacks to the fight with their PhD supervisor on the topic of 'ideograms' and 'concept writing'*
Regarding the Lindholm amulet. The first thing that came to mind for me was a rudimentary attempt to inscribe a musical scale. Like if we were to write, 'doe ray, mi, fah, so, la, ti, do'
Hello Dr Crawford, I really enjoy your videos. Can you help me understand, people like Einar Selvic, are they singing and pronouncing the words correctly for I am getting the vibe it is more fan fiction than anything else?
"I don't believe in magic" proceeds to describe a nuanced highly educated belief in magic.
Well it’s another case of us imposing our world view upon anther time and culture.
Thank goodness someone gets it!
Yeah, so now we rather project modern reductionist views on ancient rune inscriptions - influenced by modern materialistic atheism/skeptism, if we don't want to see "magic". Everything potentially "magical" must now have a mundane meaning. So say the rune carver made an inscription "AAAAAAAZZZBMZTTT". Let's say he actually did intend some kind of magic - of course none of us know what he actually intended and we have no way of finding out. One side of the debate thinks it "rubbish" or tries to explain it away. You hear these "mere abbreviation" or whatever arguments, which are essentially meaningless - no one really knows anything definite.
I would say that I lean towards the other side of the debate - based on a long and rich literary, mythological, and folkloric context as well as comparative mythology - how language and alphabets were viewed, particularly Hebrew and Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Who is really imposing a moderm worldview on another time and culture? We don't really know.
@@FranciscoFum446 Dude, calm down. Ancient societies wrote down magic spells all the time, which we know are such because we can read them. The reason the runological equivalent of a keyboard smash is viewed ambivalently, is because it might be as simple as runecarving practice. Imagine thinking someone's English homework was actually a magic spell. That would be silly. Just because we do not know what someone intended when carving something, jumping immediately to: 'It Must Be Magic and Sorcery!' is a bit, you know, presumptive and stereotyping of past societies as viewing anything 'high tech' as magic in some way.
Also if your comparison for Norse culture is Ancient Egyptian and Hebrew culture 2000 years older than Norse culture, your 'comparison' doesn't hold much water. Egyptians wrote spells all the time (very poetic ones too), but they didn't think their writing system was magical or a gift from Heru-ur or whatever.
Crud, youtube froze and lost my comment. Not to appear to be a "yes man". But, I whole heartedly agree and support all you said regarding runes, and I had thought a great deal about "Havamal" so, I appreciated the explanation. My thoughts were that the spoken word was a way to create ideas, no one was even allowed to own any of their own scriptures, besides it might lead to common people creating their own ideas! Totally makes sense that a story would be told and handed down of a god (Oðin) sacrificing to obtain the use or understanding of written ideas. Another piece of evidence is that runes have never been discovered as having been used for more than recording or communicating things to be preserved after death, which in itself is sort of magical. :)
There's some survivor bias at work here. We see so many of the preserved runic inscriptions being intended to last beyond death, because the carvings that _didn't_ would be made on more perishable media than stone, discarded and have since (mostly) been lost to us. Check out the Bergen Museum for examples, e.g. of drunk messaging by wooden rune sticks.
It's not your listeners who need the patience. We need open minds and curiosity. Thank you for YOUR patience to explain and clarify.
I would argue that the christian church wasn't against myth and superstition, only that they were intolerant of myth and superstition other than their own.
A huge portion of elder futhark runic inscriptions include non-linguistic use of runes. They were perhaps decorative, symbolic, or maybe even held ritual (magical?) purpose. So your insistence that they are just letters doesn't seem to be true for the elder futhark at least.
@@gavinrolls1054 He briefly brings it up dismissively and then ignores it in his thesis. He calls it 'some' and gives a single example. But it's more on the order of 40%! That's looking at the earliest 500 years of runic inscriptions which includes a couple hundred inscriptions. That's a huge portion and ridiculous to dismiss.
@@christopherrowley7506 Politely, you are making *** up. The vast, *vast* majority of the roughly 350 Elder Futhark inscriptions (most of which are on jewelry) are linguistic uses, often names and epithets. Uses that are not linguistic are so rare that a claim of 40% is ridiculous, that 40% is likely just 'unclear meaning in some manner' which given that some inscriptions are written like 'anahahaisla?inaz', those are clearly words with no spaces, but the meaning is unclear. One of the rare exceptions is the Vadstena bracteate, which has the alphabet on it, and then something that is probably gibberish just to fill out the piece to look decorative, and even then this is most likely pure decoration for prestige. 'Alu' is a common inscription which Jackson mentions as likely a 'good luck' type-word, but it only appears on around 20 out of 350 Elder Futhark inscriptions, is obviously a linguistic usage, and is associated with other comprehensible words. There are rarely runic inscriptions that contain gibberish of unknown purpose, as Jackson discusses. One example that does is the Hogganvik runestone where there are sequences 'aarpaa' and 'aaasrpkf', but these may be spacers, acronyms, styling practice, or any other number of things than 'woo majick secret symbols', especially as on that runestone the rest of the text is roughly 'Stone of x written by x at location x' (although it is very hard to read and its exact translation is uncertain).
@@therat1117 Check them again. Lisbeth Imer's catalogue of the early inscriptions is handy. A few of the many many examples:
lhhhi(d)uuR
lalllltigþtluuuugl
auauu
uþuþuþuþuþuþuþuþuþuþ....
@@christopherrowley7506 Alright this was tricky because I don't speak Danish and her catalogues are not digitised. However, using a German rune database I was able to find them. 'lalllltigþtluuuugl' is actually 'lalllltigþtluuuugl--þlsolauilatl' from Gammel-Stenderup. The assignment of the rune staves on that piece is hard because the inscription is badly damaged, but it appears to be intended as writing. 'þuþuþuþuþuþuþu' I couldn't find, but it is just 'you' written over and over. Someone was obsessed. 'auauu' is also on a bracteate from Sigerslev, is decorative, and it's attached to one of those horse-with-man's-face images, so might be an onomatopoeia, considering that sound is basically 'hey!' in many Germanic languages. 'lhhhi(d)uuR' is from the Sædding bracteate and is an incomplete transliteration. It actually reads: 'ihhhi(d)uuzead(f)iiuhwsh-aiiuzm(l)hþila(l)(u)----z', although the inscription is damaged. This appears to probably be an actual linguistic inscription, maybe with part of it as filler, but is simply too badly damaged for it to be understood fully, and its rune staves are hard to understand. The middle dash, for example, represents a character that is an 'o' shape which may or may not represent 'o', and the difference between 'm' and 'd' and 'þ' and 'w' is hard to understand because of how the runes are written. Just because we don't understand it doesn't mean it is non-linguistic.
Also did you pull this from Heilung lyrics? They kept coming up whilst I was researching.
The database I used was runesdb(dot)eu.
Letters can often be used as symbols that represent a specific thing. I would then suggest that was likely true with runes as well, way back in history. (we just may not have the historical knowledge to make the connection)
Some modern day examples of letters that can have specific meanings...
A to Z, meaning from beginning to end. Or if someone says AAA, it makes reference to something that's 'top of the line' and much like the use of 5 stars today... ★★★★★
Another example is XOXO, often used at the end of a love letter.
Then you have specialized letters or characters that mean something to that specialized group. The letter G as an example, used by masons.
Then we have letters used to describe a shape or a path... Like the letter S, meaning a curve or S hook. C can be for a a C clamp, and D for a D face.
Numbers can stand alone... Such as 7 for luck, 666 for evil, #1 for first, C note for a 100$ bill.
.
and I don't buy into magic either. I'm just demonstrating symbols can certainly stand alone and have a specific meaning; based on the context of the use and the cultural use (or popularity, slang) at the time.
Krister Vasshus!
Fantastically interesting input as always!
So in a nutshell, runes weren't used by themselves for magical/amulet purposes even though the extant myths, poems, and artifacts heavily imply the contrary. What about that sword discovered with tiwaz carved on the hilt? I mean, I don't like fluffy neopagans making stuff up out of thin air either, but to say that they had no magical or symbolic meaning outside of being contained in words and sentences seems like oversimplification to me.
That is the same as a modern soldier carving a letter on their helmet or weapon. It's just a letter that stands for something. Possibly a god, possibly a name.
I think that's an oversimplification of what he said *and* you are entirely assuming that that rune on that sword is magical in intent. It could indicate the swordbearer's initial or anything. It seems like you're really looking for something you can't evidence.
He says the runes were used for magical purposes, but they were overwhelmingly if not totally used for writing the words down of a given spell. That doesn't make the runes inherently magical themselves. It makes them a vehicle to express magic. That's the difference, and that's almost entirely what we see.
Also, those poems and myths were not written down by pagans themselves. They were written down by Christians when those runes already were falling out of use. What they can exactly tell us about how Norse pagans practiced magic hundreds of years before being committed to parchment is not very significant.
@@justinstewart4889 What do you think of the Blekinge series of stones? Stentoften, Gummarp, Istaby, Bjorketorp? (500 -700 AD) On Gummarp the inscription is "Hathuwolf sets three staves FFF", a lot of runologists have read this "wealth, wealth, wealth". Then Stentoften "Hathuwolf gave J", a lot of runologists do read this as "good year" or "good harvest". These would suggest a rune can stand in for its concept. The context of the Blekinge stones do seem to be some fertility or blessing effect, it includes a written out curse. The Holborough Kent spearhead with the T rune is more iffy, it's hard to find a picture of it, but I have seen it questioned if it is even a rune, so some ambiguity there.
If memory serves me well(I have to check again though cause it's been two years almost since I came across that) Tacitus in his Germania says something about symbols being carved buy Germanic tribes and used for rituals
I'm not sure though but I remember that I was surprised to find a reference from Roman historiography about this subject
Alphabet evolution: Egyptian hieroglyphs -> Proto Sinai (Egypt writing system) -> Phoenician -> Greek alphabet ( vowels ) -> Latin -> Modern European languages but it started in Egypt it seems. Europe is linked to Egypt. Why were runes dropped in favor on Egyptian writing, do you know?
I think you might be going too far in saying that the Runes have no symbolic meaning. It is true that their primary purpose is to represent the sounds of the language, but Norse culture was steeped in symbolism and omens. There was a practice called "casting runes", which was used to predict the future. We don't exactly know how this worked, but a reasonable guess is that it worked like Tarot cards, where if you picked the letter "Fehu" it meant something to do with wealth, or generally some other word starting with "F", or that it somehow had some meaning according to its position in the alphabet and what "Aett" or row it was in. It is true that there is a bunch of crap on the internet with no sources, claiming each rune has a bunch of meanings, none of which are actually attested from the Viking period, but this is probably similar to how the process of casting runes worked back then as well. You picked a letter, then you made a bunch of associations about what it could mean. Or perhaps the runes did symbolize certain things but those were lost to time. You said at 6:34 that the letter "Fehu" doesn't mean "money" or "cattle". But, in Beowulf, a poem written in Latin characters, the scribe used the letter "Ethel" to stand for the word "Ethelweard". It is reasonable to assume that this was an abbreviation going back to when runes were primarily used to write English. I have also heard that the "Mannaz" rune was used as an abbreviation for the word "man" in a bunch of languages, but I don't have a source for that. Also, the rune poems seem to suggest that the runes had meanings, although it might not so much be that they were describing symbolism that already existed for those runes, or the rune poems were just useful mnemonics for remembering the letters. The fact that Odinn received the runes and gained knowledge over everything seems to suggest they had some hidden meaning that can be unlocked by mystics. Also, the word "Rune" is related to the word "secret" also suggests that they have some hidden meaning. I don't think that they thought writing "Cow" would magically make a cow appear, but they probably did think they had some kind of power, if even just for divination purposes. One thing that has always struck me is how mundane most runic inscriptions are. They are usually just a persons name, to denote ownership, or to say who made it. But, that doesn't mean they didn't think it had any power. They might have thought writing their name on something didn't just make it so they could tell what belonged to who, but that it somehow "bound" the object to them. Similarly, the fact that so many runic inscriptions say "[Person's name] made this" could just be pride in their craftsmanship, or advertisement for their wares, but it might also have been putting something of "themselves" into the object. Maybe runes meant different things to a shaman and a trader/craftsman. One of them saw hidden meanings in runes, and the other one just used them to write down their grocery list. But, we will never know for sure without going back in time and asking them.
You also got to remember he's looking at it as a linguistics who grew up in a Christian dominated world. So go to him for linguistic knowledge and then add other knowledge that you find to create a hole. Remember he also stated that the moon meant nothing to the Nordic speaking peoples. Even though their calendar was devoted to the moon and in a world full of Moon Goddess they had a moon God. The moon DID mean something. There has been findings of people using the runes to label somethings with runes, even in trading. But then that is when we go to Archeologists. But if you can't look at runed as letters first and you will not understand the symbols or how to use them.
Cope + seethe + dilate
I think it's good he's critical and trying not to spread many 'thingies', but sometimes he goes too far in the other direction.
When there is plenty of reason to think something and he outright dismisses it. He is a human being after all.
@@antonzhukov682 XD BRO YOU USE 4CHAN TOO??? EPIC, HIGH FIVE!!
My dude, you are full of wishful thinking on a masterful scale. The 'casting runes' thing is probably closer to an oracle where you write a question on a piece of bone and then interpret how it cracks in a fire or whatever as an answer from whoever you were asking the questions to. 'Tarot card' usage is laughable and is ITSELF a Christian form of magic extremely unrelated to anything ancient. Using abbreviations is not 'magic' or 'special meaning', it's abbreviation, exactly like modern abbreviations such as btfo or fubar. The 'rune names' from the rune poems are just common words that start with the sound the rune means, like 'cow', 'man', 'tree', or 'lake' as mnemonics. 'Rune' in some language does mean 'secret', but as in 'hidden meaning', ie, something that doesn't mean what it looks like, ie, a letter. They were *literally* calling letters 'secrets' as an analogy for 'thing which means something other than what it looks like' because they had no word for 'letter' ('letter' is a Latin borrowing in English). Occam's razor might be unfun, but NEEDS to be applied always.
How would I write “WARRIOR “ with runes
Do you think that when mentioning runes in plural (e.g in Sigrdrífumál: Sigrúnar þú skalt kunna, ef þú vilt sigr hafa, ok rísta á hialti hiǫrs...) it could mean a written sentence (magical poem) in the runic alphabet and not runes alone with their individual meaning?
Have you looked into the Øverby stone? It was found a couple of years ago.
Proto-Indo-European led to Proto-Germanic, which led to Proto-Norse (which evolved into Old Norse) and Proto-English. Proto-English evolved into Old English (which I studied in college; Battle of Brunanburh?), then on to Middle English (Chaucer), early Modern English (Shakespeare), then Late Modern English, then Internet English. Old English was originally written in runes. (That part about Internet English is a joke.)
Very Enjoyable
Why do we have (and use) the word “rune”? Why don’t we just say “letters from the futhark alphabets“? Does the use of this special word contribute to the continuation of these misconceptions?
Because the were called runes. Pretty much all rune stones during the late viking age rune stone fad starts with "X carved these runes after..."
But sure it probably contributes, but anything that has anything to do with norse ("vikings") gets this mysterious coolness to it to some people, so that is not unique to runes.
Rune is a modernization of Old English rūn plural ᚱᚢᚾᚪ meaning runic letters aswell as secret mystery it is cognate with Gothic 𐍂𐌿𐌽𐌰 both these descending from Proto-Germanic *runo If Old English Rūn had survived it would probably be either Rown or Roun
before watching the video: the topic is kindof redundant. Letters are symbols. not only for sounds. An easy example: greek letters are also used as numbers, another example: latin letters are used as symbols for musical notation. I see no reason why runes would not be used in the same capacity. Furthermore, the Names of letters can be unconnected with the contemparary sound in a language. sometimes a letter-shape represents an idea. Archaically the letter "A" is hypothesized to represent a cow, bull or Aurochs.
So: letters are symbols, not only for sounds but for many many things. The rune poems, and runology and divination etc. while it may not be historically accurate as to how people used the runes when they were in widespread use. It doesnt matter, people find new ways of using letters or symbols. The ancient vikings, nor modern scholars and acedemics do not "OWN" the runes. You cant tell people what they mean to them. I still havent watched the video so I dont know if that is what it is about but the poit still stands.
Our conception of Runes evolves with current cultural paraigms independant and also influenced by archeological and scholarly works. both can happen and both are valid uses.
"the term 'rune' as used by scholars at least in this field" im glad you make the distinction.
"what it means" vs. "what its used to do" is an interesting conversation. I dont think we can definitively say that just because something is proven to be used for a purpose that it has no other meaning.
were not double tyr runes carved on swords on their own for some magical meaning or am I misremembering?
Thinking of magical carvings, kids still carve letters of their name and lovers name in a heart on park bench or in a tree. Is it "dangerous " to say that that is magical? I dont think so becuase I have a cultural context and have seen the practice, however I understand that jumping to conclusions about archeology is always dangerous.
great point and good video!
The statement about an antiquarian attitude toward old style letters makes me think of how some modern-day Christians use the early modern English word "scripture" to mean writings from the bible, with associated mystical truth value attached. When this was originally used in writing the KJV it just meant "writing", but as time has passed this old-style word has been exclusively applied to biblical texts and has a magical mystique to those who use it that way.
I have a sense of having observed this about other old fashioned English words used in religious conversations, but I seem unable to remember these other examples right now.
I want to say that the F in Proto-Germanic represents a voiceless bilabial fricative moreso than it does a true labiodental "F". But Proto-Germanic also had lots of allophonic consonants so I'd find it easy to believe both were commonly used and generally regarded as the same noise.
It seems that the bilabial articulation was more common in old europe overall, and we have a shift toward preferring the labiodental articulation over some time.
There’s a certain mysticism about language. For most of history the letters and writing seemed magical because it was seen as a high art for the educated elite. From ancient Egyptian writings all the way up to Christian monks spending hours copying manuscripts. It seems that this basic skill today was at one time very magical and difficult to learn, thought as gifts from the gods, like Odin’s sacrificial hanging to find the runes.
I would say that it’s good that this modern way of conceiving of runes as inherently magical has nothing wrong with that. Be grateful that the majority of people are literate and it’s seen as as a part of day to day life. These people are tapping into something, evil some are misguided by misinformation 🍄
I do have to ask for the sake of asking how you see the concept of bind runes in a scholarly light.
If I carve the word "anthrax" in cool angular stylized letters on my Trapper Keeper, which would be more likely: my sheep suddenly dying, or a thrash metal band from New York showing up at my house to play a song?
Depends if you have any sheep, my money is on you suffering a plague of Anthrax fans 😁
Alphabetic writing is a different psychotechnology than pictographs (ref. J. Vervaeke) which engenders different thought. I can understand why people press letters into the role of symbolic pictographs, as it fills a particular need, but it also bothers me to see history distorted to serve modern requirements.
sure its differnet. but do you know what the development of each is not intertwined?
Hebrew letters are letters each letter has a deeper symbology possibly similar
I feel your frustration of having to say this over and over and over and over and over and over again. People simple *want* to believe what they want to believe. Facts be damned.
Oooooo! Maybe the Lindholmen amulet is a "snapsvisa"😃
×garble× ×garble× BEER!😂
Hey, that's weird. I just saw your video on the Rõk rock and Henrik said the never carved a Rune twice, next to each other. Then, 8? Interesting....
Amor
Are you surprised by the use of Futhark as abbreviations? 😅 while it wasn’t originally used that way neither was LOL it’s the evolution of language and as Futhark has come into the light more in recent years it’s been pushed through. Even the use of bindrunes can be mirrored by the Emoji 😮
I love the work you do and appreciate the detail you put into your work as always. Thank you for sharing your knowledge 🙏🙌👍
Great video!
quick question were runes originally a sewn language rather than a written language? I guess meaning embroidered with the shape of the characters not having rounded elements.
Carved, not written. Round shapes are far more difficult to carve into stone, bone or wood.
It's interesting that Scottish Gaelic borrowed words from Old Norse, one of which is rùn, meaning "secret" and also a term of endearment, i.e. "mo rùn" meaning something like "my treasure/secret/dear".
I may be wrong, but I think the word rún in Scottish Gaelic actually comes from Proto-Celtic. Possibly more interestingly, the Norse rún and English rune may derive from the proto-Celtic word too.
Maybe someone was practicing runic script, or testing out an inscription tool
I wonder why Roman numerals don't have the same magical reputation as Futhark does? I haven't personally heard of anyone doing it. Is it perhaps because Roman numerals are used more often?
ok so if runes do not have individual meaning where does this whole idea of casting runes to eighter predict the future or get an answer to a certain question come from?
All invented within the past 100 years or so he'll probably within the past 20 by neo pagans and new age magic people who have no idea what they are talking about
@@wikkanoIt's kinda sad that like over half of the neo-"pagans" are just practicing made up crap. Like if you're gonna do it, do it right.
I actually think it'd be COOL if someone took the time to faithfully reconstruct the religion, and do it accurately, but few do.
Tacitus mentions the ancient Germans taking a branch, cutting it into strips with each piece being given a mark and then the pieces tossed onto a cloth. While looking up so not to see the pieces, the caster then picks up three at random and makes a reading.
Great video. I am on your side on this one and have been annoyed as hell with new age weirdos thinking they know some ancient tradition when all they know is some 19th century national romantic trash.
Runes = mostly Letters, only ONE Symbol.
Havamal uses madhr rune to mean "man". This is the only known example of rune = symbol.
Hrafnkell Freys godhi lent lots of money to his neighbours. MAYBE Hrafnkell wrote his accounts, using the feoh rune, but he wrote it on perishable birch bark, so we can never know
that line you ref at 21:20 "...do you know how to paint them?" Do we have evidence of runes ever being painted onto objects?