Runes and the Origins of Writing

by Alain de Benoist

  5

  The Oldest Inscriptions

  At the end of the 19th century, Ludwig F. A. Wimmer was convinced that no runic inscription predated the 4th century. Not so long ago, we thought that no inscription went as far back as the 3rd century. In the 1920s, Maurice Cahen thought that runic writing “could not be dated back further than the 2nd century AD.”18 In 1937, Wolfgang Krause knew of only twelve texts anterior to the end of the 3rd century. Their location indicated that runic writing came into being in the area of current Denmark and then spread to Norway and Sweden, as previously thought. In the 1980s, most people thought roughly the same: that no runic inscriptions were anterior to the end of the 2nd century, but things have subsequently changed.

  The dating of the oldest inscriptions is by no means easy. No inscription in old Fuþark can be dated historically, which means that their dating relies on archaeology, but also on linguistic data. In many cases, there remains a fairly large degree of uncertainty.19

  Around 1970, the runic inscription that was considered to be the oldest was Øvre Stabu’s spearhead, found in a Norwegian tomb around 1890. It bears raunijaR as an inscription and we date it back to roughly 150–200 (on the basis of a Roman sword found in the same tomb). Then there was the comb of Vimose, found in Funen (around 150–160) which bears the word harja (“warrior”), the two pike tips found in Illerup, Denmark (around 200), and the Værløse fibula (around 200). In the period 250–300, we have the inscription discovered in Mos (Gotland) in 1916, the tip of a sheath from Torsbjerg, the Dahmsdorf spearhead (ranja) discovered in 1865 in the Brandeburg tomb, the Kovel spearhead found south of Brest-Litovsk in 1858, etc.

  That classic chronology was completely disrupted when in February of 1979, the Meldorf fibula was found in the stockroom of the Schleswig-Holstein regional museum in Schleswig. This bronze 8.5 cm long fibula dates back to the first half, potentially the first quarter, of the 1st century. It bears an inscription that could be “iþih” or “iwih,” or even “hiþi” or “hiwi,” depending on the way you read it, but it the meaning is not apparent. Nevertheless, according to Klaus Düwel the word hiwi is an etymon for heiwa-frauja in Gothic which means “head of the household” (see also hifrya, “female head of the household”). But “iþih” could also be another name for the god Óðinn.20

  Does the Meldorf fibula bear a runic inscription? We have several good reasons to believe so. Firstly, there is the fact that the Germanic fibula seems to exclude Latin in favor of runes. However, Bengt Odenstedt claimed in 1983 that it is Latin (idin, the dative case for a female noun),21 which would be surprising since that inscription is most likely read from right to left, unlike the Latin of that time period (which is read from left to right, as we do today). Klaus Düwel, who remained cautious for a long time, has described it as “proto-runic,”22 and so does Henrik Williams. Bernard Mees believes that

  the inscription must at least be considered to be proto-runic because it is written on a Germanic fibula, which is an item similar to the first runic artefacts, and because it written in a decorative fashion just like other runic inscriptions from later periods. We can’t find Latin inscriptions on such items or with such decorations (the same goes for Greek inscriptions or inscriptions from northern Italy).23

  If the Meldorf fibula proves to bear runic inscription, its discovery is a breakthrough. It would mean that we now know of a runic inscription 100 or 150 years prior to the one that was considered to be the oldest, and 400 years older than the oldest inscription found in northern Germany.24 There is also the short inscription (two letters) written on a pottery sherd found in the 1990s in Osterrönfeld, near Rendsford in Schleswig Holstein,25 and which dates back to 51–100. These two finds, both from German Schleswig “constitute a clear proof that a degree of literacy was already present in northern Germany in the first century AD.”26 It is also a proof that, unlike what was previously thought not so long ago, runic writing was already being used in the 1st century.27

  Of course, it stands to reason that the runes predate the oldest artefacts in which we find them engraved. It is common practice to date the appearance of a script type to a hundred years before its first known manifestation. So, in the case of runes, a 100 or 200 year-long “genesis” period for runic writing seems plausible prior to the inscriptions of Osterrönfeld and Meldorf. Therefore, the runes could have been created before the turn of the millennium.

  6

  Inscriptions on Wood

  The vast majority of older inscriptions we have found are on spearheads, amulets, bracteates, fibulas, tools or stones. Very few of them (e.g. Illerup, Nydam, Kragehul, Neudingen-Baar) are inscribed in wood. However, many runologists believe that runic inscriptions were originally inscribed in wood. That would explain the angular shape of runes and why they are only made of vertical or diagonal strokes: horizontal strokes would likely hit the wood grain or fibers, and curved shapes would simply be too hard to engrave. Christophe Bord writes that

  the material used to write runic texts is most frequently metal or stone, but we’ve got reasons to believe that those kinds of material, especially stone, were dedicated to commemorative occasions, and wood was used for other occasions. Since wood rots away, we must relinquish hope of ever finding out the majority of what was written in runes.28

  That theory makes sense, but it does not make a consensus. Some runic inscriptions inscribed in wooden items found in the swamps of Illerup, Vimose and Nydam (from 200–350) have curved shapes. Nonetheless, those examples are very rare. Linguistics also indicate many etymological links associating the Fuþark with wood.

  Beside the word “rune,” the most common way to designate runic characters is stabaR in Old Nordic, stafr in Old Norse meaning “stick,” as found in the inscription of Gummarp, from the beginning of the 7th century. The German word Stab means “stick, wand, branch.” Its combination with Buche “beech,” turned it into the Old High German word buohstab or buochstap, into bokstaf in Old Saxon, bocstæf in Anglo-Saxon meaning “beechstick,” then into bokstaf in Swedish, and finally Buchstabe in German meaning “letter,” or literally “piece of beech wood.” Supposedly, runes were originally inscribed on wands, tablets, or pieces of beech wood, and that is the reason that the modern word for letters is Buchstaben. Since Jakob Grimm, most Germanists tie boka/bokos, which means “letter, writing character” in Gothic, to *bōks or *bōki(o)s, which means “beech” in common German, and its meaning supposedly changed to “beechstick bearing runes,” and then to “book” (in German Buch, in English “book”). That explication has been used by some people to claim that there was a cultural connection in ancient times between writing and beech trees.29 However, this claim is contested, notably by Eduard Sievers, because in most Germanic languages the words “beech” and “book” are gendered differently.

  There also is the possibility that the triple alliteration, a characteristic of antiquated German poetry, comes from the three ættir. That internal rhyme is called Stabreim in German, a substantive that combines reim, “rhyme,” with Stab, “stick, wand.”

  We should also note that using the verb “to engrave” is the usual way to express the act of “writing,” which comes from *wreit-a in German, *writan in Old Norse, rita in Old Icelandic, written in Old Saxon, wrítan in Anglo-Saxon, rizzan in Old High German, writs in Gothic (write shares a common root with reissen and ritzen which mean “to engrave” in German). All of these words seem to come from an Indo-European root which means “making an incision in something, making a notch in something, engraving.” The Greek word graphein which means “to write” also originally meant “engrave, trace” (see grebju in Latvian, zerebeji in Russian, etc.).

  Venantius Fortunatus who lived in the Merovingian era, was the first writer to unequivocally report on the use of runes by Germanic peoples after the collapse of the Ostrogoth Kingdom of Italy (535–553). After having been appointed the Bishop of Poitiers around the end of the 6th century, he writes to his friend Flavius: “May the barbaric
rune be painted on ash wood! / The papyrus’ use can also be the polished plank’s” (Barbara fraxineis pingatur rhuna tabellis / Quodque papyrus agit, virgula plana valet).30 That account shows that at that time, engraving runes in wood was still a custom.

  The original link between runes and wood (or wood engraving) seems to be well established, so it’s not a stretch to think — in spite of everything written against that hypothesis, and even if an argumentum ex silentio is always risky — that a huge amount of the older runic inscriptions have been lost precisely because they were engraved in this perishable material. Some authors are not afraid to shift the genesis of runic writing further back in time only because all of the first inscriptions were systematically engraved on wood.31 The hypothesis that some “runic literature” engraved on wood existed but was lost has been defended by Ivar Lindquist32 and Elias Wessén.33 Lucien Musset writes that some “texts traced in perishable materials, mostly wood; because their preservation comes only from very exceptional archaeological circumstances, we are unable to assess the real importance of this group of engravings. It is not a stretch to think that they made up the majority of the texts.”34 “What we know,” writes Raymond I. Page, “is that what we have now is but a very small fragment of the whole original runic collection.”35

  René Derolez notes that if there were a dozen rune engravers who engraved on average one inscription a month, which seems to be a minimum if we take into account how large the ancient Germanic world was, that would mean that there would have been upwards of 40,000 inscriptions engraved over the span of three centuries, which goes to show how much we are missing, since the forty or fifty runic inscriptions that we have found from the first three centuries are but 1% of that total.36

  7

  The Origin Issue

  No single runological issue is more discussed than the origin of runic writing. If we concede that this system of writing is a derived system, then what script does it derive from? Where and when did it become appropriated? Why was that writing created? Who is responsible and how did the runes make their way to Scandinavia? François-Xavier Dillman lays out the problem thusly: “Does runic writing come from an imitation of North Etruscan scripts that were still around in the first century AD near the Alps? Was it a copy of the systems in place in a lot of Latin capitals? Or did it come from the ingenious mind of one or several Germans who became more or less inspired by the Mediterranean alphabetical system, modified it, and added some made-up signs to some existing alphabetical signs, or even repurposed a potential stock of symbolic strokes from prehistory?”37 Those are the questions left unanswered.

  Raymond I. Page noticed that “for every runic inscription, there are as many interpretations as runologists studying it.”38 Indeed, many inscriptions are hard to decipher, and the results are seldom unanimously agreed upon (especially since few runologists can study inscriptions “in person” since they are unable to examine them in situ). In that matter, Klaus Düwel adds that “everything is thinkable, a lot of things are in the realm of possibility, a few are plausible, nothing is certain.”39 The same goes for their origins. “There is nothing we know for sure about the origins of the runes,” writes Wolfgang Krause.40 In such circumstances, it is obvious that “the only wise approach … is to stick as much as possible to the observable facts.”41 However, when those “observable facts” are not enough to answer the questions we keep coming across, when we have to rely on conjectures, it is not only warranted but also necessary to form hypotheses to figure out which of them is the best at explaining that which we do not know. Inductive logic can be very useful in that matter by helping in sorting out the plausible and likely. Nonetheless, we must not give in to political pressure that sometimes obfuscates debates — like (but not limited to) what happened in 1920s and 1930s Germany42  — as well as completely wild suppositions that keep the minds of amateur “runologists” heated.43

  The idea that the Fuþark derives from another script, which contradicts the autochthonous theory that was still held in 1929 by the Germanist Gustav Neckel,44 relies on the proposition that runic writing appeared immediately under an “alphabetical” form when every other writing seems to have first gone through pictographic, ideographic or syllabographic stages. The great resemblance between runes and letters from Mediterranean scripts which are much older than runic writing (and also derive from the Phoenician alphabet) was noted since the beginnings of runology. So naturally there are three main theories: they either explain runic writing by an appropriation of the Latin script, the Greek script, or of scripts from northern Italy (“North Etruscan”).

  8

  The Latin Theory

  The theory that runic writing is derived from Latin was first held by Ludwig F. A. Wimmer in 1874, a man considered to be the father of modern runology.45 According to him, runic writing was created between the end of the 2nd century and the beginning of the 3rd century by a German who lived next to the Roman limes in southern Germany and was inspired by the city of Rome in its Imperial period. The issue then is that the older runic inscriptions of that time (the Kowel spearhead, the Pietroassa bracelet, etc.) were found in eastern Europe and written in the Gothic language. “How could it be that runes show up so late in western Europe, which is supposed to be their birthplace?” asks Maurice Cahen.46

  Holger Pedersen goes over the Latin theory in 1923,47 but he thinks that the Celts were probably an intermediary between the Romans and the Germanic people, which is why he emphasizes the similarities between runic writing and Ogham: their peculiar orders compared to Mediterranean alphabets, the groupings of their letters, the fact that letters bear acrophonic names, the fact that both the Fuþark and Ogham have a sign for the ŋ letter.48 He therefore thinks that both the Germanic and Irish peoples created their alphabets in a Celtic environment influenced by Latin. That borrowing is supposed to have taken place in the beginning of the 1st century in the Rhine region. That theory of an alphabet which served as a common model for Fuþark and Ogham was approved by Fernand Mossé. Twenty years later, Fritz Askeberg believes that based on new runic inscriptions from east Germany, Poland and Russia it’s very unlikely that runic writing came from a territory occupied by the Romans and that it must have come from the Goths living near the Vistula in the second century and inspired by the Latin alphabet.49

  Thanks to Askeberg’s work, Erik Moltke developed in 1951 the theory that runic writing was created by Danish merchants from Latin.50 He argues that runic writing couldn’t have come “from any Etruscan territory or any territory under Etruscan influence,” citing how Denmark (especially Scania) was very likely to be the birthplace of runic writing, and also the undeniable fact that lasting relations existed between Rome and Scandinavia. The runes would supposedly come from the Roman uppercase writing from the imperial period and would supposedly have been created at a time when trade with the Romans was increasing.51 They would supposedly be more or less contemporary of the existence of Jesus, with a margin of error of fifty years later and 100 years before. Moltke’s theory, which suggests a Rhineland intermediary, assumes that the invention of runic writing served purely utilitarian purposes, but then why didn’t the Danish merchants simply use Latin?52 And why don’t the oldest runic inscriptions have any “commercial” or utilitarian characteristics?

  In spite of being violently criticized by Elmer H. Antonsen,53 the Latin theory remains the one currently approved by most runologists. Bengt Odenstedt recently supported it and he too believes that the Goths created runic writing,54 as does Elmar Seebold who, like Pedersen, believes in a Celtic intermediary,55 and Henrik Williams who believes that the runes were derived from uppercase Latin writing.56 Similarly, Gad Rausing57 and Arend Quak believe it was rather derived from cursive Latin, and like Wilhelm Heizmann and Marie Stoklund, the latter believing that the birthplace of runic writing is Zeeland.58 Klaus Düwel also thinks, with reserve, that it was borrowed from the Latin language at the very beginning of the 1st century. He is backed by F
rançois-Xavier Dillman who believes that “the shape of most runic signs was clearly inspired by the characters of Latin writing.”59

  The Latin theory is obviously based on the reality of Roman presence and influence in western Europe. The general idea is that the numerous cultural and commercial connections between the Romans and the Germanic people could only lead the latter to develop some vernacular writing, and that would also explain the close similarity of some runes with Latin letters. The similarities are quite obvious between Latin and the r, f, þ, i, t, v, l and b letters of runic writing. There are also shape- and sound-based similarities for five more runes: a, c (or k), d, o and s, but for p, m and x the shape similarities do not match the phonetic similarities. Lastly, seven runes have no equivalent whatsoever in the Latin alphabet: g (g), n (n), j (j), ï (4), p (p), z/R (y), ŋ (5) and d (d). Moltke thinks the differences between the Fuþark and the Latin alphabet are due to the borrowing being “indirect,” which does not mean much. John S. Robertson has a somewhat complex theory inspired by Jerzy Kurlowicz’s “the 4th law of analogical change” to explain those differences.60 The people behind the Latin borrowing theory explain the -io or -ijo ending of some names in runic inscriptions by an influence of the -ius Latin endings.

  However, this theory has two issues: firstly, in most of its versions, the theory does not give enough time for the runes to realistically migrate or spread to northern Europe, meaning that the timespan between the initial borrowing and the appearance of the first runic inscriptions in Scandinavia is too short to be plausible. Secondly, classical Latin was never written from right to left nor in boustrophedon61 at that time, whereas it is common practice in runic writing, which jeopardizes the credibility of the borrowing.