The origins of the runes: where Germanic writing began

A bone comb found in the Vimose bog, on the Danish island of Funen, bears a single carved word: harja. It dates to the second half of the second century AD and is among the oldest securely dated runic inscriptions. With that small everyday object begins the documented history of a script the Germanic peoples used for more than a thousand years, from Scandinavia to England, from the shores of the Baltic to the Viking merchants in the East.

A word that means secret

The word rune has a wide family. In the Gothic of Wulfila, the bishop who translated the Bible for the Goths in the fourth century, runa renders the Greek mysterion, mystery. In Old Norse rún means both the written sign and hidden knowledge, and Old Irish rún means secret. This nuance has fed the idea that runes were born as magical signs. In fact the oldest inscriptions are mostly personal names, ownership formulas and craftsmen's signatures.

The link between writing and mystery is not, after all, exclusively Germanic. In societies where few could carve letters, the ability to write carried prestige and an aura of power. Runes should therefore be read first of all as a true alphabet, with a sound value for each sign, to which symbolic meanings and ritual uses were added over time.

The first witnesses

Alongside the Vimose comb, another very early inscription is the spearhead from Øvre Stabu in Norway, with the word raunijaz, perhaps “tester” or “one who puts to the proof”. More debated is the Meldorf brooch from Schleswig-Holstein, of the first century: some read runes on it, others Latin letters. Most inscriptions of the early centuries come from southern Denmark and Scandinavia, which suggests that the alphabet was created or adopted in that area.

The inscribed objects are weapons, brooches, combs and gold amulets called bracteates. They are often prestige goods, linked to warriors and leading families. The phrases are short, and the language, Proto-Norse, is very close to the Common Germanic reconstructed by linguists. Many of these finds come from votive deposits in bogs, where weapons and precious objects were laid down after battles.

Three theories about the model

Where did the Germanic peoples get the idea of writing? As early as the nineteenth century the Dane Ludvig Wimmer argued for derivation from the Latin alphabet, which Germanic peoples knew through contact with the Empire along the Rhine and the Danube. The Swede Otto von Friesen proposed a Greek model instead, while the Norwegian Carl Marstrander pointed to the North Italic alphabets of the Alps, derived from Etruscan. Each theory finds support in certain shapes: R and F recall Latin, other signs resemble Alpine ones.

Today many scholars hold that the main model was Latin, without ruling out Alpine influences. The runes, however, are not a copy: their angular shapes suit carving in wood, they avoid horizontal strokes that would be confused with the grain, and they follow their own order, the futhark, which does not match that of the Latin alphabet.

The question of the setting in which the transfer happened also remains open: Germanic mercenaries in Roman service, amber traders, frontier communities. No ancient source tells the story, and the Roman historian Tacitus, who around 98 describes the Germans casting lots with “notis quibusdam”, certain marks carved on sticks, does not say they were runes. The birth of runic writing thus remains a silent innovation, known only through the objects that preserve its traces.