Vestvågøy
Theme - 6
Runes - the Futhark script
Long before Latin letters came to Norway, a
north-European script was developed among Germanic
people. From around the second or third century AD,
a lettering system appears which is thought to have
been worked out by Germanic (including Norse)
traders who encountered Mediterranean writing
systems - Greek, Latin and Italo-Celtic.
The letters, as they appear here with their
Latin equivalents, are formed of rather twiggy
arrangements of straight lines. This would help in
their production, for they were mostly carved on
wood and sometimes on stone, where it is hard to
make curved lines, unlike writing on parchment with
a pen and ink. Any man with a knife at his belt
(probably most men at the time) would have been
able to carve them in a piece of wood. This
alphabet is one version of the futhark
script, which varied from time to time, and from
place to place.
As a script for writing on wood or stone,
futhark resembles the ancient Irish
writing-system of ogham,
also with a Latin inspiration but very different to
look at.
The name of the script - futhark - comes
from the first six letters of the alphabet above,
but it is also called 'runic script' or 'runes'.
This word appears to mean 'secret knowledge', and
must reflect its impact on a generally illiterate
society. When people first saw the power of such
writing, they must have imagined that it was some
almost divine and mystical thing. In fact, a legend
about the runes describes the god Odin hanging
dying on a tree:
I know I hung
on the windswept Tree,
for nine days and nights.
I was stuck with a spear ...
I peered downward
and I took up the runes.
Screaming, I took them -
then I fell back.
Here the power of literacy has become mythically
associated with a divine struggle. Odin is
suffering in order to gain the secrets of literacy
- the runic script. In fact there was nothing
particularly magical or religious in the origins of
the runes or futhark, though some people
(including many Nazis in the 1930s) have wanted to
find some profound mystical Teutonic meaning in
them. In fact the script developed in perfectly
normal everyday communication, in trade, merchants'
labels, marking personal property and graves. It is
unlikely to have been used originally for lengthy
passages of writing, but for shorter inscriptions
of this sort.
It provides a link to Scotland and Ireland, too,
since Vikings brought their script to the Orkney
islands and elsewhere. The chambered cairn at
Maeshowe contains several runic inscriptions. The
concerns of the graffiti artists can be guessed
from the translation of the runes:
"Ingibjorg, the fair widow: many a woman has
gone stooping in here."
"It is said that treasure is hidden here well
enough."
"Treasure was carried off three nights before
they broke this mound."
And very high up on one wall a joker called
Eyjólfr has written: "Ejjólfr
Kolbeinssonr carved these runes very high up."
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This
project has been supported by the EU as part of the Culture
2000 programme.