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Runes, the letters early Germanic peoples and the Vikings wrote with, are made mostly of straight strokes, which were easy to cut into wood, stone, bone and metal.

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LanguageHistory

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The runic alphabet is called the futhark, after the sounds of its first six letters: f, u, th, a, r, k. The oldest form, the Elder Futhark, had 24 letters and appears in inscriptions from around AD 150. In the Viking age Scandinavians cut it down to 16 letters, the Younger Futhark, so one rune often stood for several sounds. Runes have almost no horizontal strokes, probably because a cut along the grain of wood is hard to see. The word 'rune' is related to old Germanic words for a secret or mystery. Most surviving inscriptions are short: names, owners' marks, memorials on standing stones. The longest known, on Sweden's 9th-century Rök stone, runs to more than 700 runes.

Türkçe oku
Eski Germen halklarının ve Vikinglerin kullandığı run harfleri çoğunlukla düz çizgilerden oluşur; bu çizgileri ahşaba, taşa, kemiğe ve metale oymak kolaydı.

Run alfabesine, ilk altı harfinin seslerinden (f, u, th, a, r, k) ötürü futhark denir. En eski biçimi olan Eski Futhark 24 harflidir ve MS 150 dolayından kalma yazıtlarda görülür. Viking Çağı'nda İskandinavlar harf sayısını 16'ya indirdi; bu Genç Futhark'ta tek bir run çoğu zaman birkaç sesi karşılıyordu. Run harflerinde yatay çizgi neredeyse hiç yoktur; büyük olasılıkla ahşabın damarı boyunca açılan bir çentik zor seçildiği için. “Run” sözcüğü, eski Germen dillerinde “sır, gizem” anlamına gelen sözcüklerle akrabadır. Günümüze ulaşan yazıtların çoğu kısadır: adlar, sahiplik işaretleri, dikili taşlara kazınmış anma yazıları. Bilinen en uzun yazıt, İsveç'teki 9. yüzyıldan kalma Rök taşındadır ve 700'den fazla run içerir.

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