Individual task №10. Runic inscriptions in Old English.

To start with, those mysterious symbols are not just a part of rituals but also a
useful tool which bound all the power of the words together. They are found in
different spots among the world and are known as an earliest written records in
English. Anglo-Saxon England is also described as a country which contradicts
orality as a basic form of sonic communication. Historians suppose that runes
were also some kind of a writings which were at the borders before Christianity
between speaking and writing. At that time, new religion brought literacy to
people but runes were still first attempt to definite a sound with its visual form.

Runes are the oldest way of writing in Germanic languages. Some scholars give
at least two periods in the history of early runic inscriptions. The first one is
called “Archaic period” and it starts at 2-5 th century up to 7th century which is
found in small areas of England but very diverse in Iceland, Denmark and is
supposed to be a pre-Christian time. The second or continental period of runes
continued approximately to 9th century and during this time it affected England
fully. During this centuries the Scandinavian variant of runes was used and it is
considered to be a younger variant of Fuþark (runic line). In Britain we could
find broad alphabet with 33 runic symbols denoting letters. Such diverse
development of runes was due to phonological changes. In the late period each
rune has its own sound and represent the first half of the word e.g. rune which
denotes sound [θ] and [ð] was called as a “Thorn”. As they were cut in solid
material such as wood, stone or bone, runes looked as a straight lines with
angles. Mostly, in our present days we can find runes carved on jewellery,
ancient weapon and monoliths as they are considered to be important cultural
devices which give hints to understanding the past times.

Runic texts are considered to be very important in cultural and linguistic sphere.
But runic inscriptions are usually transliterated to avoid mistakes. The rune
“epel” transliterated with the help of the Dickins system as “oe” but some
scholars represent i-umlaut as Pr.Germanic “o”. This variant is represented in
written Anglian texts but well, usually such differences are geographically
broad and as an example this is represented by “e” in West Saxon and Kentish.
Old English had numerous situations where runes were doubled: 1. When the
double letters appear in the word- doubled runes will be. They indicate the end
of one word and the beginning of the following. E.g. ‘hogback’ 2. Usage of
single runes if the doubles are to be expected: ‘gebidaes’, ‘setae’ Great Urswick.
3. Also consonant runes are doubled if singular runes are expected: ‘hiddigyp’
at a Hartlepool II.

There are also some doubtful cases in runic researches. Discussion of

chronology is still the first issue when talking about runic inscriptions. If they
are carved on a stone there are two important things: the text must be
contemporary with the stone itself and the language of inscription must be
available for the place and time of its writing. Usually scholars doubt to tell if
the place and time of writing are connected, but if the object where runes are
written is a kind of a monument or sculpture then yes, the data is available to
tell that the runes there are the modern (in relation to the date of their carving on
the object). As an example, there is a signature ‘eoh:woro htae’ on the
Kirkheaton stone. The other difficulty is in archaic words and their meanings.
The inscriber could use forms of language from earlier period which due to its
etymology justification which will be difficult to philologist to reproduce the
real data of the text. Raymond Ian in his book gives a great example of those
type of words: he took a Ruthwell text where he had found an unstressed oe,
which should’ve been replaced by ‘e’ as in ‘alde’ and the form ‘rodi’ has ending
–i, which is considered to be proper to nouns of the a-declension but not to o-
declension.

Runic writing is divided into three groups: early, Germanic and North
European. The early Germanic script had 24 letters with three separate groups
which were called aettir. The main letters were f, u, th, a, r, k which formed the
name to the alphabet. Old English had some sounds which were not represented
by a rune so later they have been added. Scandinavian languages on contrary
had more sounds and some letters were compounded into one sound, as an
example there was only one letter for k and g, also one for a, ae and o. Other
varieties of runes included the Hälsinge Runes (q.v.), the Manx Runes, and the
stungnar runir, or “dotted runes,” all of which were variants of the Nordic script.
More than 4,000 runic inscriptions and several runic manuscripts are extant.
Some scholars tend to think that Frisian people had brought futhark to England.
The real story of its origin is unknown as suggested due to spreading of Latin,
Greek, North Italic. There we can also find some interesting characters like “þ”
and “ð. As it was already said about the first one- the second rune is called ‘eth’
and is a moderation from the Latin letter d, So þæt means “that”, þe means
“the”. The rune ƿ (“wynn”) is a very interesting as it represents the letter “w”. at
the beginning - ƿ was replaced with “uu”, but later it was combined for better
usage and now is called “double-u”. James Daly had told about relationship
between orality and literacy which is represented in runes and its differences
from Germanic forms. He believes that communication between Germanic and
Roman peoples through trades could be a starting point for runes. Also he had
found some categories of runes examples of which we can find in Anglo-Saxon
Rune Poem and were involved by Latin script: 1 category- ᚱ, ᚻ, ᛁ, and ᛒ are
equal to their Roman characters representing R, H , I, B; 2 category- ᚠ, ᚢ, ᛏ, ᛚ,
ᛋ and ᛗ had not equal sound in Roman characteristic, denoting F, U, T, L, S,
M; 3. ᚷ, ᚹ, and ᛖ had the same Roman form but Latin sound system as in G, V,
E; 4. ᚦ (th), ᚪ(a), ᚾ (n), ᛄ (j), ᛈ (p), ᛇ (ë), ᛝ(n), ᛡ(ia), ᛟ(œ) and ᛞ(d) are the only
one runes like this which do not exist anywhere else except of the Latin variant
which is probably have influenced the fuþark alphabet.
This alphabet couldn’t survive during the Norman conquest. Then it was
replaced by the system of dotted runes and later was latinised. And so, runes
lost their linguistic value and came back to bookish and monumental usage.

References
Daly J. Orality, Germanic Literacy and Runic Inscriptions in Anglo-Saxon
England, University College Cork, 2017. Online access:
35d22403694f1802d309ea24dca5dd718d8b.pdf (semanticscholar.org)

Higgis J. The functions of pre- Old English runic inscriptions, Univeersity of

Nottingham, 2020.

Looigenga T. Texts and contexts of the Oldest Runic Inscriptions, Volume 4,

Boston 2003

Page R.I. Runes and Runic inscriptions, the Boydell press, 1988.

Park Young-Bae, the origin of runes and runic inscriptions, Kookmin

University, 2008.

Julian J. Old English writing, online access:

https://www.fluentin3months.com/old-english-writing/

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Eggjum-Stone