In the last video we looked at Runeology, the study of Runes.
And also looked at a bit of mythology. In this video, we're going to take a brief look at the actual history of Runes.
According to historians, runes first appear around the 1st century A.D.
But it's unclear where they originally came from.
It is believed however, that
conquering Germanic tribes may have adopted these letterings from more Southern European peoples which they conquered,
assimilating them into their own culture.
Wherever runes originally came from, it's clear that the Shifa Runes developed for simple pragmatic reasons.
First off,
parchment and inks were expensive,
and so less common outside of the Greco-Roman area of Europe, so runes had to be carved into objects.
Secondly, straight lines are easier to carve into bones, rocks, trees, etc. than it is to carve curves.
And then thirdly,
runes usually don't have horizontal lines,
because that would go against the natural lines in wood and so would be very hard to do so.
The famed Roman Historian Tacitus
and his famous writings called Germania, which were written about the customs and lands of the barbaric Germanic peoples
around [70 A.D.] mentions the use of rune stones.
Tacitus writes that runes were used as lots and [are gray] or for divination and,
believe it or not,
this is a practice that would continue right until this day. In fact, throughout the history Runes,
they would be used to tell the future, to perform magic, to curse or bless people in places.
One old Norse story tells of how a badly written rune
cursed a Farmer's daughter with sickness and the hero has to come and destroy the runes by writing a blessing in their place.
The earliest fully developed and most widely used Runic script was known as Elder Futhark,
a 24 character alphabet used between the second century A.D. and 400 A.D.
Thanks to Roman conquests and the spread of Christianity,
which at the time used Latin scriptures called the Vulgate,
runes slowly began to die out, being replaced by Latin lettering.
However, Runes were not wiped out, and runes were still used during the Dark Ages,
particularly among the Pagan peoples of Northern Europe and Scandinavia, and
somewhere during this period Elder Futhark slowly underwent a reform.
No one knows the reason why,
but what is known is that eight characters were removed,
creating the alphabet that is known as younger Futhark.
The lifespan of the specific set of runes roughly corresponds to the Viking age.
Young Futhark suffered the same fate though, as the older Runic scripts before it,
Being wiped out by the further expansion of Christianity and to Germania and Scandinavia.
By the eleven hundreds, Christianity was beginning to replace the Pagan religions of Scandinavia, and
as the Bible was written and taught in Latin, so interest in the language and
its letters slowly caused runes to decline in use.
Despite this, instead of being replaced, the runes continued to be used
for writing in the native old Norse language and once again over time, they went through a reform
becoming what is known today as the medieval Runes.
The Latin Alphabet on the other hand,
was mainly used by the clergy for writing in Latin and for teaching, but
Latin prayers
could and were often written down with Runes as well.
Because they were cheaper, runes stayed popular for a lot longer, but as inks became more common and cheaper, runes
continued their decline.
Now you think that would be the end of runes,
between inventions such as the printing press,
inks becoming cheaper,
Church schooling,
but somehow, through all this, runes survived and
actually were still used in Sweden until the early 20th century.
The last alphabet of runes used were called Dalecarlian runes.
These runes, as you guess, come from a region in Sweden called [Dalarna].
These runes had been created by mixing old runic scripts with Latin lettering. They were mostly used for decorations and
calendars etc.
But it's still pretty cool to think that these runes
could have been used within the living memory and that interest in them is still current.
I know this was a very quick tour of runes and history,
but hopefully you found it interesting and has made you want to look more into runes and runeology,
even just a little bit more.
Please leave us a comment
if you think there's anything that we might have missed that would have been important and
if any you guys have seen runes in real life then please leave a comment, as I'd love to read it with that.