The Younger Futhark: sixteen runes for the Viking Age

While the language spoken in Scandinavia was gaining new sounds, the alphabet that wrote it was shrinking. It is one of the most curious paradoxes in the history of writing. During the eighth century the twenty-four-rune futhark was replaced by a row of sixteen, the Younger Futhark, which accompanied the whole Viking Age and was used to carve thousands of memorial stones in Sweden, Denmark and Norway.

A gradual reform

The change did not come by decree but in stages. Some seventh-century inscriptions, such as the Björketorp and Stentoften stones in the Swedish region of Blekinge, or the Norwegian Eggja stone, show transitional forms: certain signs change value, others fall out of use. Towards the end of the eighth century the new system appears stable. The reasons for the reduction are debated; scholars have suggested sound changes that made the names of some runes ambiguous.

The sixteen runes are fé, úr, þurs, óss, reið, kaun; hagall, nauðr, ísa, ár, sól; týr, bjarkan, maðr, lögr and yr. With so few signs each had to cover several sounds: the u rune also stood for o and w, the k rune also for g, the t rune for d, the b rune for p. Reading a Viking text therefore requires recognising the word from its context.

Long-branch and short-twig

The Younger Futhark has two main variants. Long-branch runes, also called Danish runes, have full, clearly visible strokes and were used above all in Denmark and for great official stones, such as the one at Jelling. Short-twig runes, also called Swedish-Norwegian runes, reduce the strokes to small marks and suited quick writing on wood; the Rök stone is a famous example.

A third, even sparer form is that of the staveless runes, known as Hälsinge runes after the Swedish region where they are attested. Here the signs almost entirely lose their vertical stroke and become short dashes: a kind of runic shorthand, hard to read but quick to carve. They are attested on a small number of stones in northern and central Sweden.

Stones, merchants and graffiti

Most inscriptions in the Younger Futhark are found on rune stones raised between the tenth and eleventh centuries, especially in the Swedish province of Uppland, which holds more than a thousand. The formulas are repetitive: so-and-so had this stone raised in memory of his father, his son, his companion. Some recall journeys to England, the Baltic, Byzantium. Runes travelled with the Vikings: a graffito in the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople preserves a name, perhaps Halfdan, carved by a Norse visitor.

Also famous is the Piraeus Lion, a Greek marble sculpture now in Venice, in front of the Arsenale, on whose shoulders ribbon-shaped runes were carved, probably in the eleventh century. The text is badly worn and the proposed readings remain hypothetical, but the very presence of runes on that marble bears witness to the mobility of Scandinavian warriors.

With Christianisation and the spread of the Latin alphabet, the Younger Futhark was gradually supplemented by dotted runes, which distinguished ambiguous sounds. Thus the medieval runic alphabet was born, yet the sixteen Viking runes remain the form best known to the public, the one still associated today with the sagas and the dragon-prowed ships.