Norse language and writing: Elder Futhark runes vs. Old Norse language

April 5, 2017 11:47 AM

I'd like to better understand the difference in language between runic alphabets (specifically Elder Futhark) and more "written" languages like Old Norse, which is what I believe old manuscripts like the Prose Edda were written in.

How flexible is a runic alphabet like Elder Futhark? Could you, for example, translate a modern book into Elder Futhark and maintain its phrases and nuances, or was it a more coarse way of communicating somewhat short messages? (i.e. runes often being used as inscriptions on various objects).

In comparison, is a language like Old Norse, which seems to be more suited for writing long passages, something that came along hundreds of years after runic alphabets like Elder Futhark, and to an English-speaker maybe more close to a foreign language like German?

Did the two alphabets ever co-exist for the purpose of communication, or were they always separated by centuries?

posted by wubbie to Writing & Language (7 answers total)

Alphabets and languages are two completely different things. You could write any language in the elder futhark, just as multiple languages are written using (minor variations on) our alphabet. It might be missing some sounds, but that is easily circumvented. I'm on my phone so I can't give references on the time line easily right now, but I will do so tonight if nobody else gets to it in the meantime.
posted by karbonokapi at 12:17 PM on April 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

I can't answer all of your questions, but you can definitely use the Elder Futhark to write a book in modern English, but this isn't translation - it's transliteration. The words are exactly the same; it's just that different symbols are being used to represent them. You can write Old Norse with the Elder Futhark as easily as you can with the Roman alphabet.
posted by darchildre at 12:57 PM on April 5, 2017

Elder Futhark was no longer being used by the 13th century, but Medieval runes were just coming into use when the prose Edda was written, and other derivative were in use up until the 20th century, though possibly not continuously.

The article on medieval runes points out that the Poetic Edda has the runic M used in place of the word for man, so they were sometimes interspersed and definitely in use at the same time.

Many of the artifacts we have with runes are hard durable objects with short inscriptions, but that probably just reflects what artifacts were likely to survive over a millennium -- and what kinds of things you might write on them -- rather than whether runes are suited to writing long texts. There's probably some observational bias going on here.
posted by Llamadogdad at 1:10 PM on April 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

Here is a long text written in runes (older and younger futhark, plus runic code!). And here is a medieval manuscript written in runes, in an antiquarian spirit. But you're right that the vast majority of runic writing takes the form of rather short inscriptions. As the posters above note, runes are just a script, not a language, so in theory you could write any language in runes. Especially the younger futhark had a pretty small number of letters, though, so it was actually not that great for writing the Old Norse language - some inscriptions are ambiguous due to the lack, e.g., of a runic character for /g/. As all of the above may suggest, Latin and runic writing of Old Norse did indeed coexist for many centuries - Latin mainly in books, and runes mainly on stone monuments, jewelery/weapons, or on ephemera like wooden tags, bones etc (kind of like post-its). This very old-school site has some good information on runes.
posted by ogorki at 8:47 PM on April 5, 2017

There's a guy, Jackson Crawford, a lecturer at Berkley, putting up youtubery on this exact subject. Here's his thoughts on your question. He's also got a nice introduction to the Poetic and the Prose Eddas. It's all sort of at the Intro to Old Norse Poetry 101 level, but it works well as a set of introductory vids.

He's also got his own version of the Poetic Edda, which I've found quite readable. I'm no scholar though, just a duffer.
posted by bonehead at 9:51 PM on April 5, 2017 [2 favorites]

Many of the artifacts we have with runes are hard durable objects with short inscriptions, but that probably just reflects what artifacts were likely to survive over a millennium -- and what kinds of things you might write on them -- rather than whether runes are suited to writing long texts.

Also what's easier to actually scratch onto a hard surface. Straight lines and angles are a lot easier to do than curves, as any schoolkid who's ever scratched their name onto a desk knows.
posted by praemunire at 8:00 AM on April 6, 2017

Sorry for the link screw up: here is Crawford's video on the Elder Futhark and Old Norse timeline. Sorry, was on mobile last night and must have hit the wrong thing.
posted by bonehead at 8:48 AM on April 6, 2017 [1 favorite]