Elder Futhark: The 24 Runes, and Where the Meanings Came From

Twenty-four Elder Futhark runes arranged in three rows on a weathered stone slab, with roots and grass at its base.

The Elder Futhark is the earliest runic alphabet: twenty-four characters used to write early Germanic languages. It is securely attested by the second century AD, although some finds may be earlier. Its name comes from its first six runes, f, u, þ, a, r, k. Scholars reconstruct its early rune names using later evidence. The sounds the letters represent, the meanings of their names and their modern divinatory interpretations need to be considered separately.

What is the Elder Futhark?

The Elder Futhark is an alphabet whose order survives in inscriptions. Three important examples are the Kylver stone and the Vadstena and Grumpan gold pendants, or bracteates. They preserve different amounts of evidence: Grumpan is damaged, and Vadstena is known from documentation of a stolen object. The table gives the rune-row portions of their Runor database records, with spaces added for readability.

Object and date Rune-row reading What to notice
Kylver stone, G 88
Late fourth to fifth century		 (f) u þ a r k g (w)
h n i (j) p ï z s
t b e m l ŋ d o		 The twenty-four positions are represented, with some uncertain readings. The line breaks here are editorial.
Vadstena bracteate, Ög 178
Sixth century		 f u þ a r k g w :
h n i j ï p z s :
t b e m l ŋ o d		 The recorded inscription separates three groups of eight. Runor encloses the lost object's entire reading in square brackets.
Grumpan bracteate, Vg 207
About AD 500		 f u þ a r k g w ········
h n i j ï (p) - - ····
t b e m l (ŋ) (o) d ······		 Two characters are unreadable and others uncertain. Runs of dots divide the groups.

Parentheses mark uncertain readings. The two hyphens in Grumpan's row stand for unreadable runes; its dots are carved separators. These are transliterations in Roman letters, not pictures of the original carvings.

Kylver puts p before ï and ends d, o. Vadstena puts ï before p and ends o, d. A modern chart can use one conventional order, provided it does not imply that every inscription follows it. These three objects are examples of the evidence, not a count of all surviving rune-row inscriptions.

Why is it called a futhark and not an alphabet?

The name follows the same principle as alphabet, from Greek alpha and beta. Futhark takes the first six runes in their usual order: f, u, þ, a, r, k. The sign þ represents a sound like the th in thorn. As Tineke Looijenga's survey explains, the unusual order does not prevent the script from being an alphabet.

What are the twenty-four runes, and are the rune names real?

Here are normalized rune forms in the order printed in Looijenga's survey. Actual carved forms vary, and the table above shows variations in their order.

ᚠ ᚢ ᚦ ᚨ ᚱ ᚲ ᚷ ᚹ
ᚺ ᚾ ᛁ ᛃ ᛈ ᛇ ᛉ ᛊ
ᛏ ᛒ ᛖ ᛗ ᛚ ᛜ ᛞ ᛟ

Rune names have historical evidence behind them. The earliest forms commonly printed on Elder Futhark charts, however, are linguistic reconstructions. An asterisk in a form such as *ūruz marks a reconstructed form rather than a spelling copied from an early inscription.

Important later witnesses include the Salzburg manuscript's letter-name lists and the Old English, Norwegian and Icelandic rune poems. These belong to different writing traditions. The Old English poem has twenty-nine stanzas, while the Norwegian and Icelandic poems each treat sixteen runes. They are not surviving twenty-four-entry Elder Futhark manuals.

The manuscript history needs care. In Bruce Dickins' 1915 edition, George Hickes' 1705 printing preserves the Old English poem, whose manuscript text was lost in the 1731 fire. Dickins also discusses evidence that some accompanying names and rune forms came from another manuscript. The Norwegian poem survives through seventeenth-century copies of a manuscript lost in 1728. These transmission problems affect particular readings; they do not make the whole naming tradition an invention.

The u-rune shows how the evidence can diverge. Inmaculada Senra Silva's study compares Old English ūr, understood as aurochs, with Icelandic úr, rain. The Norwegian poem has traditionally been read as referring to slag, but she argues that it may describe a rainlike spray of sparks. She considers aurochs a possible original name. The rarity of the Old English word does not erase its cognates in other languages.

There is also evidence for using a rune to stand for its name. Looijenga reads the j-rune in the Stentoften inscription as *jāra, referring to a good harvest. This is a specific interpretation of an inscription. It does not supply a complete set of instructions for casting twenty-four runes to predict the future.

What are the oldest runic objects, and where are they now?

The Vimose comb is among the earliest securely dated runic objects. Excavated on Funen in 1865, the antler comb is held by the National Museum of Denmark under inventory number 22657. The Danish record dates it to AD 150 to 160; Runor gives about AD 160. Its inscription reads harja, generally interpreted as a personal name, though a proposal to read it as a word for the comb itself is also recorded.

New discoveries complicate any claim to a single oldest inscription. A 2025 study of the Hole stone fragments from Svingerud, Norway gives associated burial-context dates of 50 BC to AD 275. That broad range concerns the archaeological context, not a directly measured carving date. The authors describe the fragments as the earliest known archaeologically dated rune-stone and leave the sequence and purpose of the inscriptions partly unresolved.

Kylver is a limestone slab from a grave cist on Gotland, now cataloged by the Swedish History Museum as inventory 13436. Grumpan is cataloged there as 14392. Vadstena's absence needs different wording: it was stolen from the museum in November 1938. The theft record does not establish that the object was destroyed.

The Meldorf fibula, a brooch from Schleswig-Holstein, presents another problem. Jonas Carlquist's discussion records disagreement over whether its marks are runes or Latin letters. It should therefore be described as disputed, rather than used as an unquestioned starting point for runic writing.

What are the three ættir?

The division into three groups of eight has early inscriptional evidence. Vadstena's recorded row has colons between the groups, while Grumpan uses runs of dots. Kylver's row does not mark that division.

Later manuscripts call the groups ættir. Looijenga discusses the word in connection with both eight and family; its interpretation should not be treated as settled by one proposed etymology. Dickins records later Icelandic names linking the groups to their initial runes. The separators on the early objects do not themselves give those group names. The division also became useful in rune ciphers, where a letter could be located by its group and its position within it.

Why did the row shrink to sixteen runes?

In Scandinavia, the twenty-four-character system developed into the sixteen-character Younger Futhark around AD 700. The change is described in Hanna Åkerström's survey of early Viking Age inscriptions. She reviews different proposed dates and explanations, rather than a single documented reform.

In the staged account she summarizes from James Knirk, ï, ŋ and p probably fell out of use early. Changes in rune names may also have affected letter values: *jāra becoming *āra is the familiar example of the j-rune taking an a-value. But Åkerström also cites objections to treating name changes as the explanation for sound-value changes. The loss of d and g remains unexplained in the account she summarizes.

The eight older signs dropped were ï, ŋ, p, o, d, e, g and w. This describes the Scandinavian development; other regions developed different rune rows.

Did the Vikings use runes to tell fortunes?

Viking Age Scandinavians generally wrote with the Younger Futhark. The older evidence often cited for rune divination comes from a much earlier source: Tacitus' Germania, chapter 10, written around AD 98.

Tacitus describes pieces cut from a branch, distinguished by marks and scattered on a white cloth. A priest or household head prays, draws pieces and interprets their markings. An unfavorable result ends the consultation; a favorable one still requires confirmation through augury. His phrase notis quibusdam means certain marks. He does not identify an alphabet or give a list of rune names.

The passage establishes marked-lot divination in his account, but does not establish that the marks were runes. Nor does it describe the full system of meanings, reversed readings and layouts found in modern rune guides. Dating the oldest surviving inscription cannot by itself tell us when people first used the script.

This uncertainty should not be turned into a claim that runes had no ritual uses. The inscriptions include more than owners' labels: Looijenga discusses blessings, curses and symbolic readings, including Stentoften. Such uses need to be assessed individually. They do not establish continuity with a particular modern fortune-telling method.

Where did the twenty-fifth rune come from?

A blank stone is not one of the letters in the historical twenty-four-character row. Some modern divination sets add one. For example, the listing for Ralph Blum's The Book of Runes anniversary set describes twenty-four marked stones and an empty one called Wyrd. That is evidence about the modern product's contents.

The Library of Congress record for Blum's 1987 third edition separately records a package of twenty-five rune stones. That dates a twenty-five-stone package to 1987; the note does not identify the extra stone as blank or establish who introduced it.

Where did the runes come from?

Scholars have proposed Latin and North Italic models for the script. The exact route of adaptation remains debated. In a 2025 paper, Staffan Fridell analyzes rune formation using a Latin model. He presents tendencies in the shapes, with exceptions, rather than a rule that every rune must obey.

Carving helps explain some of the angular forms. Fridell discusses the ease of cutting diagonals and the effects of different materials, including wood, bone and metal. He also describes rounded variants and cases where angles became curves. The shapes do not support an absolute claim that runes avoid curves or horizontal strokes, or that wood grain alone explains their design.

From the archive

Our rune designs include Elder Futhark Field Notes and Elder Futhark Guides. Other designs in the Folklore collection include Helm of Awe and Yggdrasil: The Nine Worlds. For more on the literary sources, read Norse Gods: who they were, and who wrote them down and Odin's ravens, Huginn and Muninn.

Sources

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