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*NEW essay!*
NEW ESSAY linked at the bottom of the page! It;s on How the changes brought about by Christianity are shown in the surviving rune stones and other artefacts.
I have split this essay down into manageable chunks, partly for easier reading and partly for the fact I can't seem to get all of the dratted thing onto one page! (Web writing skills very poor, I'm afraid.) Please follow the links to the sections of the essay, theres also a link to the bibliography to show which sources where used.
Are the Runes Still of Relevance in Today's Society?
Introduction
The runes. Mention this to an ordinary person and the words will probably mean nothing. Perhaps there will be a vague recollection of a connection with Vikings and large stone monuments. In reality, the runes are the oldest and only European complete surviving example of a pre - Christian divination system in modern times.
Divination of itself can mean a variety of different things. The Collins English Dictionary lists it as: “1. The art, practice, or gift of discerning or discovering future events or unknown things, as though by supernatural powers. 2. A prophecy. 3. A presentiment or guess.” In this case at it’s fundamental core is the usage of a number of marked objects with pre-set meanings, with a smaller number chosen by chance to influence the present or future. Although there are other forms of ‘oracle’, this essay is primarily concerned with this type.
As well as divination, the ancient people used them for a variety of other tasks, cursing, protecting, shape changing and casting of spells. Although historians have plenty of evidence for that usage, this essay will focus mainly on wether they are still of value in today's society. By this, wether the original meanings of the runes in particular, are still relevant.
To do this, a basic understanding of the runes must be given first, their history, meanings and uses. This should enable both sides of the argument to then be presented before a concluding statement.
Contrary to public understanding, the runic system is over 3000 years old, this has been proven by dating evidence from some of the runic stone monuments still standing in Scandinavia.
The runes oldest artefacts are dated to approx. 1300 BC. This is in their complete form as a written code, so logically their construction must have been earlier than this date. Although artefacts dated from this pre - Christian period still exist, their use remains a mystery or has no relevant modern use.
This can be illustrated by the statue ‘Venus of Willendorf’. This was found on Malta and consists of a small, human statue of an exaggerated female form, strangely missing a head or face. (See Appendix 1) There are several similar statues, found in the same area of Europe. Although these date from the prehistoric period, their use can only be guessed at, as there is nothing in the modern era, which equates to this.
Why, then, do the runes survive in their original coded symbolic form to the modern day? From so long ago, a system such as this should have disintegrated, as with other artefacts from this period, into fragments and not survived as a legibly written complete alphabet from several corresponding sources.
Certainly detailed descriptions of their use and misuse, masters of their craft and basic unchanged meanings should not have survived 3000 years of destructive human history. Do they survive because of the New Age Boom in the 1980's? Several ancient systems where revived at this point and the runes where no exception. Perhaps due to modern interest, people wanted to be the first to 'rediscover' another ancient system, take the dust off it and make money from it.
So why do they matter? The more I investigated to prove the runes had things which they could not achieve, the more I discovered that the system was the most diverse I'd ever seen. I found the system to still be relevant, despite almost constant attempts to change it. So a diverse, relevant system which had endured over 3000 years of history, this was something very unusual, which I had to investigate further. When I did this, I found information difficult to obtain, often having to purchase reference texts instead of temporarily borrowing them. The runes touch on many subjects, from Nazi symbolism, use in ancient spells, written language to a divinatory system. Not even Tarot, the most widely known and negatively perceived system can equal the runes chequered history.
With their diversity, the system could be perceived to be a complicated one, to be able to cover so many different periods in history. The system itself is quite a simple one, a symbol or rune indicates a concept or idea, as well as a phonetic sound and key word to it's meaning. This makes translation of runic very difficult, as instead of writing the words 'material possessions' or 'wealth' a carver could simply carve the rune for it.
Unfortunately this also has the meaning of the phonetic sound 'f', so a mistranslation of the phrase could easily occur. (See Appendix 2 for Wealth rune illustration) As has been previously stated, the runic system of writing is over 3000 years old. This amount of history for any country would be staggering, so only the major points of their history are mentioned below. The runes themselves have undergone only minor changes to their system and order, although several different systems still exist. A physical description of the runes would assist at this point. A rune is a simple mark made of up to four straight lines. It is thought that the straight line was developed as a result of their being primarily carved on stone. (See Appendix 3 for an illustration of the Germanic Futhark)
The runes spread out across Europe in the early years of their development and, as with language, locally diversified to produce systems which where different in small ways but essentially the same. (See Appendix 4 for table of differences between systems) The Germanic or Elder Futhark, or alphabet, runes are accepted to be the oldest system, with 24 runes in all. The Danish Futhark has only 16 and the Anglo-Saxon Futhark has 28 runes. There are also systems of Armenian and dotted runes. These differences came about through local diversification. The Anglo-Saxons, for example, needed more letters to cope with the different sounds in dialect. This relates to history in a small way, as I will look at the development of the system as a whole rather than the development of a single variation.