Swedish-Norwegian Futhork (short-twig runes)

Staveless runes were the climax of the simplification process in the evolution of

runic alphabet Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...

s that had started when the

Elder Futhark The Elder Futhark (or Fuþark), also known as the Older Futhark, Old Futhark, or Germanic Futhark, is the oldest form of the runic alphabets. It was a writing system used by Germanic peoples for Northwest Germanic dialects in the Migration Peri ...

was superseded by the

Younger Futhark The Younger Futhark, also called Scandinavian runes, is a runic alphabet and a reduced form of the Elder Futhark, with only 16 characters, in use from about the 9th century, after a "transitional period" during the 7th and 8th centuries. The ...

.Enoksen 1998:75 In order to create the staveless runes, vertical marks (or staves) were dropped from individual letters (or runes). The name "staveless" is not entirely accurate, since the i rune consists of a whole stave and the f, þ, k and the s runes consist of shortened main staves. Since their discovery on runestones at Hälsingland in the 17th century, staveless runes have also been known as the Hälsinge runes. This label is, however, misleading since staveless runes also appear in Medelpad,

Södermanland Södermanland ( or ), locally Sörmland, sometimes referred to under its Latin form ''Sudermannia'' or ''Sudermania'', is a historical province or ''landskap'' on the south eastern coast of Sweden. It borders Östergötland, Närke, Västm ...

, and the

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

town of

Bergen Bergen (), historically Bjørgvin, is a city and municipalities of Norway, municipality in Vestland county on the Western Norway, west coast of Norway. , its population is roughly 285,900. Bergen is the list of towns and cities in Norway, secon ...

Shape

The staveless runes may appear hard to recognize at first glance, but the only difference between them and the preceding

is – in fact – their omission of main staves. If main staves are added, it is apparent that the '' a'', '' n'', '' t'', '' l'' and ''s'' runes are identical to their staved predecessors.Enoksen 1998:76 No '' ą'' rune has been found in inscriptions, but it has been postulated that it was a mirrored form of the '' b'' rune due to pairings indicated in the staveless runes.Enoksen 1998:77

Scholarship

It appears from the title page of

Johannes Bureus Johannes Thomae Bureus Agrivillensis (born Johan Bure; 1568–1652) was a Swedish polymath, antiquarian, mystic, royal librarian, poet, and tutor and adviser of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. He is a well-known exponent of Gothicism. Life an ...

' runic primer that Bureus had some understanding of the staveless runes in 1611, but that this has been denied by virtually all runologists.Enoksen 1998:183 Since Bureus had not succeeded in deciphering the runes, a large poster with the image of two runestones with staveless runes was published in 1624 together with the announcement of a royal reward for the one who could decipher them.Enoksen 1998:194 It would, however, take half a century before someone found the solution. At the end of the 1660s,

Athanasius Kircher Athanasius Kircher (2 May 1602 – 27 November 1680) was a German Jesuit scholar and polymath who published around 40 major works, most notably in the fields of comparative religion, geology, and medicine. Kircher has been compared to fe ...

, who was an interpreter of

hieroglyphs A hieroglyph (Greek for "sacred carvings") was a character of the ancient Egyptian writing system. Logographic scripts that are pictographic in form in a way reminiscent of ancient Egyptian are also sometimes called "hieroglyphs". In Neoplatonis ...

, studied the runes, but he arrived at the conclusion that the staveless runes were nothing but meaningless scribbles and that the stones had been erected in order to protect against snakes. The verdict of the hieroglyph expert was too much for the mathematician, antiquarian and Hälsingland native

Magnus Celsius Magnus Celsius (16 January 1621 – 5 May 1679) was a Swedish astronomer and mathematician, decipherer of the staveless runes. His grandson was Anders Celsius. He was the father of Olof Celsius Olof Celsius (the elder) (19 July 1670 – 24 Jun ...

. Celsius departed for Hälsingland in the early 1670s and made meticulous drawings of the runestones. When he was back in Stockholm, he worked hard on deciphering the runes but had to give up. Eventually he tried to add staves to the runes and suddenly deciphered some of the staveless runes. By 1674, he had deciphered all the runes except for the R rune, which he interpreted as a distinguishing mark. The following year, Celsius made a speech at

Uppsala University Uppsala University ( sv, Uppsala universitet) is a public research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded in 1477, it is the oldest university in Sweden and the Nordic countries still in operation. The university rose to significance during ...

, where he made his discovery public. He started the process of publishing his discovery shortly after making the speech but died suddenly before the printing was finished. However, the news of the discovery spread quickly among scholars and it was used as the basis of the claim that

stenography Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed and brevity of writing as compared to longhand, a more common method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek ''st ...

had originated in Sweden.Enoksen 1998:195 It would be

Olof Celsius Olof Celsius (the elder) (19 July 1670 – 24 June 1756) was a Swedish botanist, philologist and clergyman, He was a professor at Uppsala University, Sweden. Celsius was a mentor of the botanist and scientist Carl Linnaeus. Celsius wrote his most ...

who finally published his father's discovery.

Examples

The following runestones are some of those that feature staveless runes: * Österberga stone *

Skarpåker stone The Skarpåker Stone, designated by Rundata as Sö 154, is a Viking Age memorial runestone that originally was located in Skarpåker, Nyköping, Sörmland, Sweden. It dates to the early eleventh century. Description The runestone was discovered ...

* Sö 137 at Aspa bro * Spånga stone

Notes

References

*Enoksen, Lars Magnar (1998). ''Runor : historia, tydning, tolkning''. Historiska Media, Falun.

Shape

Scholarship

Examples

Notes

References

See also