Then the theses described above and their arguments are put forward and criticized individually, and finally the current state of research is summarized and an outlook on future research opportunities is given to solve the problem of the origin of the runes.Īs a basis for this work, mainly scientific introductory books on runology, as well as essays in runological, historical and scriptural journals and specialist books were used. To begin with, I will briefly introduce the reader to the relevant historical context and mark out the time frame in which the Elder Futhark could have been created, whereupon I present an overview of the runes themselves. This particular theory is not necessarily more plausible than the Greek one, and it’s struggling with some of the same problems, such as centuries of virtually no archaeological proof between the proposed time of origin and actual archaeological finds, but it is able to answer many of the questions that the previously put forward theories could not. ibid.), I would instead like to include the Phoenician hypothesis, which has mainly been represented by Theo Vennemann in the recent past. Since the Greek thesis has lost many of its supporters to the Latin and North Etruscan variants (cf. Traditionally, a comparison has often been made between the Latin, North Etruscan and Greek thesis, mostly in this order from the most probable to the most improbable (cf. This article is to deal specifically with the origin of its oldest form, the so-called Elder Futhark, and to present, compare and criticize the arguments of two prominent and one rather controversial, yet intriguing, theory in regards to its origin in detail.

The Runes are the oldest form of writing in Northern Europe (cf. Picture of the Icelandic Codex Regius, one of the “original” copies of the Poetic Edda. In contemporary historical research, however, no consensus in regards to their actual origin has been able to be established yet (cf.

This shows that the people writing the runes themselves believed in a “divine origin” (ibid., p. Such was the creation of the runes, the mythical signs of the Vikings, according to their very own legends, documented in 13th century Iceland in form of the Elder or Poetic Edda, as Klaus Duewel and many others have noted before (cf. Mythological Beginnings in the Viking Age I know that I hung on that windy tree, Note: All translations from German in this text, including quotes, are the authors.

Historical Context in Ancient Germania and Scandinavia.

Mythological Beginnings in the Viking Age.

Elder futhark runes alphabet