The Viking Age and medieval runes

In this lesson: why the Viking Age row shrank to sixteen runes, what runestones say, the Anglo-Saxon futhorc and runes in medieval life.

Most runestones that tourists photograph in Scandinavia are not written in the 24-rune row at all. This lesson follows the runes into the Viking Age, when the Scandinavian row shrank, into England, where it grew, and into medieval towns, where people used runes for shopping lists and love notes.

From 24 runes to 16

Historical Between about 700 and 800 CE, as the spoken language changed quickly, the Scandinavian futhark shrank from 24 runes to 16. A skull fragment from Ribe in Denmark, around 725 CE, already uses an early form of the new row. Each rune now did several jobs: the u-rune stood for u, o, ø and w, the k-rune for k and g, the t-rune for t and d, and readers worked out the sound from context. The Younger Futhark came in two main styles, the full long-branch runes and the quicker short-twig runes, and people mixed them freely.

What the runestones say

Historical Scandinavia has about 3,000 runestones among some 6,000 runic inscriptions, most from the tenth and eleventh centuries, with Sweden, and especially Uppland, holding the largest share. The larger Jelling stone in Denmark, raised by King Harald Bluetooth around 965, honors his parents Gorm and Thyra and claims that Harald won all of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian. It is a political monument as well as a memorial.

Most stones follow a simple formula: “X raised this stone in memory of Y, his father”, or brother, son, wife or partner, often with a few words about the dead person: a good farmer, generous with food, died abroad. About seven in ten Uppland stones are explicitly Christian, with crosses and prayers such as “God help his soul”.

Women raise stones and are remembered on them, and some stones record bridges built for a soul or show who inherited property. Many carvers signed their work. The Uppland carver Öpir signed dozens. Stones were once painted, often in red, and the Old Norse verb for writing runes, fá, first meant “to paint”. Very few stones contain anything like magic beyond a handful of curses against anyone who moves them.

Runes travelled too. Norse visitors left about thirty inscriptions inside the ancient tomb of Maeshowe in Orkney in the twelfth century, one praising a woman named Ingigerth as the most beautiful of women. Runes in serpent bands run along the flanks of the Piraeus Lion, now in Venice.

The Rök stone: the longest and most puzzling

Historical If one runestone deserves a visit, it is the Rök stone in Östergötland, Sweden, raised in the early ninth century. It carries the longest known runic inscription, around 760 characters, on all sides of the stone, using long-branch runes, short-twig runes and even cipher runes. It begins as a memorial: a father, Varinn, wrote it for his dead son, Vämoð. Then it turns into a series of riddles and references to stories we no longer know, including a mention of Theodoric, a king of the Goths.

Scholars have argued over its meaning for more than a century. One recent interpretation, published in 2020 by a team of Swedish scholars, suggests that some riddles concern fears about climate and a harsh winter, remembered from a cold period centuries earlier; others read it as a heroic or religious text. It is one of the best examples of how much we still do not know, and how carefully good scholars speak about it.

Signatures, boasts and graffiti

Historical Not all Viking Age runes are solemn. In the tomb of Maeshowe, one twelfth-century carver boasted that the runes were cut by the man most skilled in runes in the western ocean. On the Piraeus Lion, runes in serpent bands were carved, probably by Scandinavian soldiers serving in the Byzantine Empire, though the weathered text is now almost unreadable. Runestones in Sweden name men who travelled to Greece, meaning the Byzantine Empire, to Serkland, the lands of the Muslim world, and to England. These are family stories, written in stone so that passers-by would remember them.

England and the futhorc

Historical While Scandinavia shortened its row, the English and Frisians expanded theirs to 26 and then as many as 33 runes, as their vowels changed. The fourth rune came to be called ōs, so the English row is the futhorc. The tenth-century Seax of Beagnoth from the Thames carries the only complete 28-rune futhorc known from an inscription.

The Franks Casket, carved from whalebone in eighth-century Northumbria, and the Ruthwell Cross, with lines of Old English verse spoken by the cross itself, show runes in a learned, Christian setting. Two runes, thorn and wynn, were even borrowed into the Latin alphabet for writing Old English.

Runes in everyday medieval life

Historical After a fire in 1955, archaeologists at Bryggen, the old harbor of Bergen, found around 670 runic inscriptions on wood and bone, mostly from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries: merchants’ tags, business letters, prayers, love messages, poetry and rude jokes. Runes also appear in medieval churches, on bells and fonts, often spelling Latin prayers.

Runic calendars kept feast days and moon cycles into the early modern period, and in Dalarna in Sweden, local runes were written on furniture and tools from at least 1596 into the twentieth century. Runes were never a lost secret waiting to be found. Ordinary people used them, without mystical meaning, right up to the time scholars and mystics began writing about them.

Runes in law books and calendars

Historical Runes were also used for long texts on parchment. The Codex Runicus, written around 1300, contains the Scanian law, the law of what is now southern Sweden, then part of Denmark, written entirely in runes. Runic calendars, often carved on wooden staffs, used runes to count the days of the year and mark the cycle of the moon and the church festivals. Some were still in use in rural Sweden and Norway in the eighteenth century. They show runes as practical tools for keeping time, not hidden lore.

The Norwegian rune poem: a medieval voice

Historical The Old Norwegian rune poem, which Dickins ascribes to an author of the late thirteenth century, describes the sixteen runes of the Younger Futhark in two-line stanzas. Each first line explains the rune name, while the second often seems unrelated, linked mainly by rhyme. In Dickins’s 1915 translation:

“Estuary is the way of most journeys; but a scabbard is of swords.”

“Hail is the coldest of grain; Christ created the world of old.”

The second stanza shows how firmly this poem belongs to Christian Norway. The rune name sits beside a line about Christ as creator, without any sense of conflict. Another stanza names Reginn, the smith of the Sigurd legends: “Riding is said to be the worst thing for horses; Reginn forged the finest sword.” Old stories and the new faith shared the same verses.

This is a useful corrective to the idea that runes belonged only to pagan religion. By the time the Norwegian poem was written, runes were used by Christian merchants, priests and farmers, for prayers as well as for business.

A practice: pair the lines

Copy the two Norwegian stanzas above into your notebook. For each, write what the first line says about the rune and what the second line adds. Then try writing a two-line stanza of your own for one Younger Futhark rune, with a plain first line and a surprising second line.

Questions beginners ask

Why did people stop using runes? Gradually, as the Latin alphabet spread with the church, schools and royal administration. Runes lasted longest in informal use, in remote areas and in specific traditions like calendars.

Were runes forbidden by the church? There is no evidence of a general ban. Runes were used in churches, on fonts and bells, and for prayers. Later, in the early modern period, a few witchcraft trials mentioned rune-like signs as evidence, which is a different matter from a ban on writing.

Can I learn to read Viking Age runestones? Yes, with patience. Learn the 16 runes of the Younger Futhark and the standard formulas, and use translations alongside. The “X raised this stone” pattern will soon become familiar.

Myths to drop: Vikings did not write runes for magic all the time, runestones are not mostly curses, and “Viking runes” on modern jewelry are usually Elder Futhark runes, from a row that was no longer in use in the Viking Age.

A practice variation: write a runestone

Write a memorial in the old formula for someone you admire, living or historical, but in plain modern English: “[Your name] raised this stone in memory of [name], [relationship]. [One line about them.]” Then transliterate just the names into Elder Futhark runes, using what you will learn in lesson 8. You will feel how the formula balances family, memory and pride, and why so many people chose it.

A worked example

Imagine someone who looks up an Uppland runestone in a museum’s online collection. The translation reads that a woman and her sons raised the stone in memory of her husband, that he died “in the east” and that a named carver cut the runes, with “God help his soul” at the end. She fills in her five notes and writes: “A widow, sons, a journey east, a Christian prayer and a proud craftsman. It reads like a family notice in a newspaper.” That is exactly what most runestones are.

Try this

Find one Viking Age runestone in a museum collection online or a runestone database. Note five things: who raised it, for whom, their relationship, anything said about the dead person, and any carver’s signature or prayer. Then write one sentence about what the stone tells you about the family.

Recap

The Viking Age row shrank to 16 runes, each standing for several sounds, in long-branch and short-twig styles. Runestones are mostly family memorials, many Christian, often painted and signed by carvers. The English futhorc grew to as many as 33 runes and lived in a learned Christian culture. Medieval Bergen, runic calendars and Dalecarlian runes show runes as an everyday script for centuries.

What next

Press “Mark as done” and continue with Magic, divination and what the sources say. For the medieval verses behind the rune names, see my rune poems page.

Further reading: Judith Jesch, Ships and Men in the Late Viking Age: The Vocabulary of Runic Inscriptions and Skaldic Verse (Boydell, 2001), and Michael P. Barnes, Runes: A Handbook (2012).

Sources

• Michael P. Barnes, Runes: A Handbook (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2012).
• Erik Moltke, Runes and their Origin: Denmark and Elsewhere (Copenhagen: National Museum of Denmark, 1985).
• R. I. Page, An Introduction to English Runes (second edition, Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1999).

Go deeper: the runes pages on this site

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