NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/talk/religion/misc/27822

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From: [e-mail] (barth.richards)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,alt.pagan,alt.folklore.urban
Subject: runes (was Peace Symbol)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 27 Jan 93 23:12:45 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Organization: AT&T
Lines: 127



In article <[e-mail]>
[e-mail] (me) writes:

>In article <[e-mail]>
>[e-mail] (Mr. John T Jensen) writes:
>
>>I don't know what you think runes were, but they were in fact letters,
>>representing sounds, not concepts (such as defence).
>
>Actually, they were both.  The runes that most people are now familiar with
>were used as letters, but they were also used in divination, so each rune
>had a symbolic meaning as well as a phonetic one.

From RUNES, by Ralph W. V. Elliot, Manchester University Press/St. Martin's
Press, 1959, 1989, page 84:

     The evidence of belief in magic expressed through single runes, magic
     words and phrases, and complete futharks[*] is incontovertable.  It
     appears to have been linked with the use of runes from their invention...

* Runic alphabets are commonly refered to as "futharks," because, in most
  of them, the first six runes had the phonetic values f, u, th, a, r, and k.

>There were also runes
>that had only a symbolic meaning and were not used for letters at all.  The
>swastika and the symbol we now call a "heart" were two of these.

Also in Elliot's RUNES, on page 85, is a figure showing various non-phonetic
symbolic runes, which includes two swastikas, one standing "upright" and
one standing on one corner.

In the book FUTHARK: A HANDBOOK OF RUNE MAGIC, by Edred Thorsson, (Samuel
Weiser, Inc.,1984) on pages 107 and 108, there is a table listing
commonly-used runic ideograms, including a swastika and a "heart."

>>Nor were they pictures of creatures.
>
>I'll have to check, but I seem to remember reading about one that was a
>stylized representation of a horse.

In Thorsson's FUTHARK, on page 106, is a table of commonly-used runic
pictographs, including a serpent biting its own tail, a man and horse
symbol, and a raven.

From Elliot's RUNES, page 84:

     ...the 'embryonic writing' of Germanic prehistory as it is embodied in
     the rock-carvings, Swedish ha:llristningar, found particularly in
     Sweden and assigned to various prehistoric periods....there also occur
     pictoral representations of men and animals, parts of the human body,
     and various implements such as axes, arrows, and ships.

>>Some were derived from Roman letters (such as the rune for
>>F), others made up.
>
>No one is positive where they came from, but some evidence points to
>Itallic writing as the source, which had the same or similar sources as
>the Roman alphabet, hence the similarities.

Elliot's RUNES has an entire chapter on the origin of runes, the basic
upshot of which is that we can't be certain, but they appear to have
developed from Etruscan, or, more likely, Northern Itallic writing
systems (or possibly under the influence of both).

>>(though later they were carved
>>onto flat surfaces -- the famous runestones of Scandinavia -- which
>>controlled their geometric shapes.
>
>Actually, the explanation I remember reading is that the shapes were
>dictated by their having been originally designed to be carved on pieces
>of wood.  If you scratch symbols into wood, in a row that goes along with
>the grain, then straight vertical and diagonal lines show up well, as they
>cut across the grain.  However, horizontal lines tend to get lost in the
>pattern of the grain, and curved lines are hard to scratch into wood.
>Therefore, runes generally contained straight vertical and/or diagonal
>lines, but no horizontal or curved lines.  Later, this rule was sometimes
>broken, especially as runes were increasingly used on stone, metal, and
>even paper (or whatever the equivalent at the time was--parchment? vellum?).

From Elliot's RUNES:

     As to variations in shape, it should be noted that the traditional
     angularity and abscence of curves and horizontal strokes in runic
     characters was due no doubt to their initial use on wood; as other
     materials came to be employed for runic inscriptions, considerable
     formal modification, such as the use of curves and horizontal strokes,
     was liable to take place.

>>Later generations that could not read
>>them may well have infused the, to them, mysterious shapes with ideographic
>>meanings and reinterpreted them as pictures, but certainly there was no such
>>intention on the part of the inventors.
>
>I don't think that's how it was, but I will have to check my references
>>and get back to you.  I recall that the phonetic values and the symbolic
>values were known and used simultaneously.  Each rune had a name that
>(usually) began with the sound that the rune represented, and the name
>was the key to the symbolic or divinative meaning.

See above.

Also, Elliot's RUNES has an entire chapter on the names of the individual
runes and how the names varied from language to language.

>>Their invention was stimulated by
>>Roman writing, amongst the then-pagan proto-Norse.
>
>Actually, runes were used over quite a wide portion of Europe, and I seem
>to remember that their early use was pretty pan-Germanic.  Again, I will
>check my references and get back to you.

In Elliot's RUNES, between pages 100 and 101, are numerous pages of
photographs of various runic inscriptions, ranging in age from the 200s to
the 1100s, and ranging in culture from Swedish to Gothic to Frisian to
English to Frankish.  The text of the book also goes into extensive detail
on the variations in the use of runes from culture to culture.


Barth "will transcribe runic texts for food" Richards

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88  Barth Richards                  "Language is a virus from outer space."  88
88  att!ihlpf!barth                           - William S. Burroughs         88
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