Younger Runes in Manuscripts and Early Printed Works

St. John’s College, Oxford, MS 17

A single page of this manuscript, fol. 5v, contains several futharks, runic alphabets, code schemes for Latin letters and ficticious alphabets. Among these are two younger fuþarks with rune names, one of which with a rich set of additional runes, and also a runic alphabet which contains at least two younger runes though mainly based on a poorly understood Anglo-Saxon fuþark. The content overlaps with that of the lost Cotton MS Galba A 2, of which a facsimile of uncertain exactness is preserved in George Hickes’ Thesaurus, pars tertia (1703), tabella VI. Both have contents the other lacks, and there are differences in the shared material, but they are clearly so closely related that they must be treated in conjunction.

Contents of MS 17

The top half of the first column contains a younger fuþark with names and sound values.
The bottom half of the first column contains an otherwise unknown fantasy alphabet with sound values, conforming to the vagaries of the Latin alphabet, but ending with the letter ‘r’ despite ample space being available.
The second column, of which the bottom half extends into the first column, contains a group of trivial ways to obfuscate text in the Latin alphabet. It is worth noting these “cryptic alphabets” include ‘y’, but clearly do not count it as as a vowel.
- Top half of the column – the five vowels are replaced by one to five copies of an uppercase letter ‘G’.
- Leftmost in the bottom half of the column – the vowels are replaced by one to five dots.
- Bottom center – all letters are replaced by the following letter; ‘z’ is not as expected replaced by ‘a’ like in a standard Caesar cipher, but rather by ‘aa’, indicating that the scribe did not understand the concept very well.
- Bottom right – the vowels are replaced by the alphabetically following letter (always a consonant).
- With these belongs a “cryptogram” written sideways to the left of the first column, where all vowels have been replaced by the alphabetically following vowel.
The entire third column, plus an extension to the right at the very bottom, contains an Anglo-Saxon fuþark with names. The ordering is disturbed, and several entries are duplicates.
The fourth column contains an extended younger fuþark with names for the base runes and values for the additional ones.
The fifth column mainly contains the fantasy alphabet of Nemnivus with sound values. This continues with no indication of a break into the first entries of the following entry.
The sixth column continues an Anglo-Saxon fuþark with sound values starting at the bottom of the previous column. Of the last few entries, at least one seems to belong with Nemnivus’ alphabet in the preceding column.
The seventh column contains a composite runic alphabet with both Anglo-Saxon and younger runes. No names or values are given, but the values can be inferred from the order despite duplicate entries. Errors show that the values in turn are based on a fuþork with names and not values.
The eighth column contains an otherwise unklown fantasy alphabet with sound values, conforming to the vagaries of the Latin alphabet.
The ninth contains the fantasy alphabet of Aethicus Ister with letter names but no sound values.

Younger futhark 1

The first entry on the page (top left) is a fuþark with the sixteen basic runes with sound vales and names. The order is corrupted, in that s and a is placed after b. For easier comparison with other futharks, this is corrected in the following. The rune-forms are long-branch types with two early variants. Rune 14, m, has the form with a closed circle, though here drawn as a separate loop on either side of the stave. Rune 4 is of the older fuþark type, which is more unexpected. It is a possibility that the slightly later version with the branches placed lower on the stave was intended, but that the copy is corrupted, possibly under the influence of Anglo-Saxon æ, or simply lack of space.

1	f	ᚠ	fe
2	u	ᚢ	ur
3	þ	ᚦ	þurſ
4	e	ᚨ	e
5	r	ᚱ	reıðer
6	c	ᚴ	coun
7	h	ᚼ	haᵹol
8	n	ᚾ	nou
9	ı	ᛁ	ıſ
12	ꞇ	ᛏ	ꞇıur
13	b	ᛒ	bercon
11	ſ	ᛋ	ſol
10	a	ᛅ	ar
14	m	ᛰ	monr
15	l	ᛚ	laur
16	r	ᛦ	reıðer

The names preserve diphtongs, but have lost some voiced fricative phonemes. Some instances of nominative -r is lost, while it is preserved after an epenthetic e in one name where it is normally lacking. All sound values are identical to the first letter of the corresponding name. Unfortunately, for the two most interesting sound values, the original names are lost. For rune 4, both name and sound value is given the unparallelled value e. Combined with the very early rune-form, it is tempting to interpret this as reflecting that the sound value had not yet changed to o, but that e somehow reflects the earlier value of ą. Rune 16 is given the same name and sound value as rune 5. This suggests that it still had not changed from ʀ to y, though the distinction between r and ʀ might have been lost.

Younger futhark 2

ᚠ fe
ᚢ ur
ᚦ þorſ
ᚬ oſ
ᚱ reð
ᚴ con
ᚼ hagol
ᚾ noð
ᛁ ıſ
ᛅ ar
ᛋ ſol
ᛏ ꞇẏr
ᛒ beor
ᛘ mɑnꝺer
ᛚ loer
ᛦ ẏr
ᚤ ƿ
ᚴ̶ k
ᚵ g
ᛁ̵ e
ᚯ æ
ᛏ̵ ꝺ
ᛔ p

Composite runic alphabet

This is given as a column of characters without names or sound values. Its main component is an Anglo-Saxon fuþark rearranged in alphabetic order, but the position of each rune is based on the first letter of its name rather than its sound value. In order to conform to the conventional form of the Latin alphabet, a cursive letter Z is added after the y-rune, and following this a bind-rune e+t representing the et-ligature or ampersand and then the Tironian note ⁊ unchanged. After these there follows three runes with sounds not covered by the classical Latin alphabet, but whose names were typically written with additional insular letters.

For the present purpose it is more interesting that for two runes, younger runes of the long-branch type are given in addition to the corresponding Anglo-Saxon ones (a and h). A further eight runes are identical and could in principle have been taken from either fuþark; presumably this overlap was the motivation behind the inclusion of the specifically younger runes. The treatment is biased towards the Anglo-Saxon fuþark, though, as 31 runes from this is included out of a possible 33; whereas six runes are missing from the younger fuþark.

Assumed equivalent letter	Anglo- Saxon rune	Younger rune	Other source	Rune name
a	ᚪ			ac
a		ᛅ
b	ᛒ	ᛒ		beorc
c	ᚳ			cen
d	ᛞ			deg
e	ᛖ			eoh
e	ᛇ			eth
e	ᛉ			eolhx
f	ᚠ	ᚠ		feoh
g	ᛄ			gyr
g	ᚸ			gar
h	ᚻ			hegil
h		ᚼ
i	ᛝ			ing
i	ᚼ			ior
i	ᛟ			eðel (??)
k	ᛣ			calc
l	ᛚ	ᛚ		lagu
m	ᛗ			man
n	ᚾ	ᚾ		ned
o	ᚩ			os
p	ᛈ			peo...h
q	ᛢ			querð
r	ᚱ	ᚱ		rad
r			?
s	ᛥ			stan
s	ᛋ	ᛋ		sigel
t	ᛏ	ᛏ		tir
u	ᚢ	ᚢ		ur
x	ᛠ			ear (??)
y	ᚥ			yr
z			Z	z
&	ᛖᛏ
⁊			⁊
w	ᚹ			wyn
þ	ᚦ	ᚦ		þorn
æ	ᚨ			æsc

Anglo-Saxon runes extracted and placed in fuþark order:

Assumed equivalent letter	f	u	þ	o	r	c		w	h	n		g	e	p	x	s	t	b	e	m	l	i	d	i	a	æ	y	e	i	k	g	s	q
Normalised rune	ᚠ	ᚢ	ᚦ	ᚩ	ᚱ	ᚳ		ᚹ	ᚻ	ᚾ		ᛄ	ᛇ	ᛈ	ᛉ	ᛋ	ᛏ	ᛒ	ᛖ	ᛗ	ᛚ	ᛝ	ᛞ	ᛟ	ᚪ	ᚨ	ᚥ	ᛠ	ᚼ	ᛣ	ᚸ	ᛥ	ᛢ
Conventional transcription	f	u	þ	o	r	c	g	w	h	n	i	j	ȝ	p	x	s	t	b	e	m	l	ŋ	d	œ	a	æ	y	e͡a	ȷ̄	k	ḡ	s͡t	q

Younger runes extracted and placed in fuþark order:

ᚠ ᚢ ᚦ   ᚱ   ᚼ ᚾ   ᛅ ᛋ ᛏ ᛒ   ᛚ
f u þ o r k h n i a s t b m l y

Tor Gjerde
i@old.no