Post by artanaro on Nov 22, 2005 14:44:47 GMT -5
Here is an article I have found concerning the use of runes in magic/craft of the elves :
Within this article by Michael Deacon Jnr. there are diagrams of the runes from the Lord of the Rings. I haven't mastered the computer well enough to get runic fonts to work let alone get it over here, but anyhow, where the runes are shown I'll just use this symbol so you know something is missing from the original article and the text will flow more clearly without my interuption. Hopefully those on this forum allready have a copy of the Lord of the Rings and you can just look there to see the runes. On with the article:
Professor Tolkien made few and relatively fleeting references to runes in his published works. But as a renowned sholar of Old English, and indeed of other Germanic tongues, he would surely have acquired some basic appreciation both of the esoteric significance and of the mundane utility of the runic futhark.1 And although when he chose to use runes in the course of his storytelling he did so within a mundane rather than an esoteric context, he nevertheless seems occasionally to hint at a magical significance. Note for example the passing references to 'runes of power' in the song of the dwarf Gimli in The Lord of the Rings:
...The world was fair, the mountains tall
In Elder Days before the fall
Of mighty kings in Nargothrond
And Gondolin, who now beyond
The Western Seas have passed away:
The world was fair in Durin's Day.
A king he was on carven throne
In many-pillared halls of stone
With golden roof and silver floor,
And runes of power upon the door...
This lay was sung whilst the Company were spending their second night in the Mines of Moria on their journey through the Misty Mountains to the elfland of Lorien. Soon, however, they were to encounter 'a single oblong block, about two feet high, upon which was laid a great slab of white stone.
"It looks like a tomb," muttered Frodo, and lent forwards with a curious sense of foreboding, to look more closely at it. Gandalf came quickly to his side. On the slab runes were deeply graven:
"These are Daeron's Runes, such as were used of old in Moria," said Gandalf. "Here is written in the tongues of Men and Dwarves: BALIN SON OF FUNDIN, LORD OF MORIA" !
Now whilst these characters are recognisably of a 'runic' nature, upon closer examination there are sigils here which cannot be recognised as belonging to any recorded futhark,2 others which appear in mutant forms and configurations. Upon even closer scrutiny, and having had the meaning conveniently decoded by the wizard Gandalf, it is obvious that the sound values of the individual characters, or staves, bear even less affinity to those of any known runerow. Our Professor, however, is well aware of such divergencies and in Appendix E to the Lord of the Rings goes into some detail as to the writing, spelling and pronunciation of words and names:
"The scripts and letters used in the Third Age were all ultimately of Elarin (Elvish) origin, and already at that time of great antiquity. They had reached the stage of full alphabetical development but older modes in which only the consonants were denoted by full letters were still in use...The alphabets 3 were of two main, and in origin independent, kinds: the Tengwar or Tiw, here translated as 'letters'; and the Certar or Cirth, translated as 'runes'. The Tengwar were devised for writing with brush or pen...(whereas) The Certar were devised and mostly used only for scratched or incised inscriptions...The Cirth...were long used only for inscribing names and brief memorials upon wood or stone. To that origin they owe their angular shapes, very similar to the runes of our times, though they differed from these in details and were wholly different in arrangement. The Cirth in their older and simpler form spread eastward in the Second Age and became known to many peoples, Men and Dwarves, and even to Orcs, all of whom altered them to suit their purpose and according to their skill or lack of it. One such simple form was still used by the Men of Dale, and a similar one by the Rohirrim.
But in Beleriand, before the end of the First Age, the Cirth, partly under the influence of the Tengwar of the Noldor, were rearranged and further developed. Their richest and most ordered form was known as the Alphabet of Daeron, since in Elvish tradition it was said to have been devised by Daeron, the minstrel and loremaster of King Thingol of Doriath... In the country of Eregion...the Alphabet of Daeron was maintained in use and passed thence to Moria, where it became the alphabet most favoured by the Dwarves...in later times it was most often called Angerthas Moria or the Long Rune-rows of Moria...The Certhas Daeron was originally devised to represent the sounds of Sindarin only...The extension and elaboration of this certhas was called in its older form Angerthas Daeron, since the additions to the old cirth and their reorganisation was attributed to Daeron. The principal additions, however, were actually most probably the inventions of the Noldor or Eregion, since they were used for the representation of sounds not found in Sindarin...In the rearrangement of the Angerthas the following principles are observable...: adding a stroke to a branch added 'voice'; reversing the certh indicated opening to a 'spirant'; placing the branch on both sides of the stem added voice and nasality...'4
It is clear, then, that our Professor was thinking of the Angerthas only as a mundane sequence of specefically linguistic characters. Despite the apparent hint in Gimli's lay, Tolkien after all awards his runes no hint of even primeval esoteric significance. Nor does he offer any instructive etymology for the term Angerthas itself. Quite clearly the Professor's runes never had, nor were intended to have, any fore than their face value as phonetic glyphs, being 'originally devised to represent the sounds of Sindarin only'. The 'runes of power upon the door' presumably therefore refer at most to an inscribed spell with the magic residing in the words of a language only incidentally utilising those particular sigils.
But isn't this overly disingenous? After all, Tolkien of all people would have been aware of the implications of the etymology of the word 'rune' itself. He would surely have known, as Thorsson 5 has more recently reminded us, of the word's essential meaning of 'mystery' or 'secret' in all the ancient Germanic dialects from Old Norse to Gothic. And that, apart from late borrowings, the word is in fact found only in the Germanic and Celtic language groups. From the Proto-Indo-European it would appear that there are two possible, but related, etymologies: *reu-(to roar or to whisper), as in a magical incantation, and *gwor-w-on-, cognate with the names of the Greek and Old Indic gods Ouranos and Varunna respectively, giving the meaning of 'magical binding'. The word seems thus to have carried magical connotations from the very beginning. In any case, a common Germanic root *runo- can be established from which the word developed, always to be used within an esoteric context. 6
The study of such context shows runic analysis to be valid on different levels: of sound or phonetic value, of symbolism and content, and, only finally, of physical representation in the form of ideograph or stave. The runes are thus not a mere 'alphabet', although they can be used as such in a mundane context, but in an esoteric context constitute a meta-language: a symbolic system through which meaning can be transmitted by the initiate above and beyond that of which natural language is capable. And it is by means of this meta-language that the initiate is enabled to interact with his or her spiritual environment.
Mythically, it is through the god of magic, Odinn, 7 that gods and men are able to recieve rune wisdom. Odinn is first to undergo initiation into the runic mysteries, as recounted in the Elder, or Poetic, Edda. Stanzas 138 and 139 of the song 'Havamal' 8 read:
I know that I hung
On the windy tree
All of nights nine,
Wounded by spear
And given to Odinn;
Myself to myself,
On that tree,
Which no man knows,
From what root it rises.
They dealt me no bread
Nor drinking horn,
I looked down,
I took up the runes
I took them screaming,
I fell back from there.
Apart from etymology, the existence of rune-magic is also adduced from archeological, runological and literary evidence. There are, indeed, many inscribed stones still extant which bear combinations of runes, often associated with other symbols, for which it is difficult if not impossible to offer a non-esoteric meaning. A number have been found specifically associated with and often interred in graves, evidently invoking some power either to ensure undisturbed rest or to prevent the dead from walking abroad. Runological evidence is widespread although sometimes more difficult to classify. Certainly many amulets and other artefacts have been found with apparently magical formulae in the form of runic inscriptions. Literary evidence is similarly widespread, not only in the form of poems from the Edda such as the Havamal but in many other sources from Tacitus to Bede. Indeed, reference to many different types of runes and their magical properties can be found: victory runes, luck runes, curse runes, runes for good health or for curing the sick, runes for protection, for success in love; so on and so on. 9 One of the best known literary references to a particular type of magical runes is found in the oft quoted story from Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica where one Imma, taken prisoner following a battle between the Mercians and the Northumbrians, could not be fettered by his captors because the chains persisted in falling from him. Magic was not unreasonably suspected and it was demanded of him if he knew the 'unfettering rune' and had with him the staves written out, 'such as men tell idle tales of', preventing him from being bound. This concept is indeed well attested and is particularly significant in view of the word's primeval etymology. Again, in the Havamal, when Odinn is claiming for himself a catalogue of rune-magical attributes there runs the passage: 'If man puts fetters on my limbs I chant such a charm as will let me escape. The fetters fly from my legs, the handcuffs from my wrists'. And we note here that the magic can be chanted, not of necessity written. The runes are not mere ideographs and are only as occasion demands rendered as such. They were surely spoken, or chanted, before they were written and the written form by no means encompasses the entirety of the runes. Now this all seems a far cry from the type of techno-magic employed by such figures as Gandalf. Indeed, one may perhaps surmise that due to the intimate identification of the runes with Germanic paganism Tolkein's Christian sentiments militated against any early thoughts he might have harboured in presenting the Angerthas as a magical system.
Whether utilised for mundane or magical purposes, archaeological evidence indicates that, as a coherent ideographic system, the Germanic runes can probably be dated to sometime prior to 50 CE. 10 But, whether or not a more precise date can ever be obtained, one characteristic of the runerow is obvious to the most untutored observer, namely the apparent resemblance of more than a few of the staves to various letters of the Roman alphabet:
The Roman and Germanic worlds had long been in contact, if not collision, at this period and it would seem quite possible, indeed more than probable, that some individual or small group set out systematically to re-engineer the Roman alphabet in order to create a specifically Germanic script. Not least because upon further examination it can be demonstrated that the runerow actually represents the totality of the Germanic phonemes. 11 It is thus, on one level at least, clearly designed to be used as an 'alphabetical' system for use within what was at that time a pre-literate society.
There has in fact been much debate over the precise origin of the twenty-four stave Eldar futhark although most commentators have settled for either a Roman, Greek, Etruscan or some sort of hybrid template. However, as the archaeological record indicates that before about 2000 CE the runes were apparently not known outside an area encompassing modern Denmark and that part of north-west Germany closest to it, southern Sweden and south-eastern Norway, the Roman option would appear to be the most obvious candidate: by this time, of course, the Roman Empire had been established for several generations just across the Rhine.
Focusing, then, on the twenty-three letter Roman alphabet it soon comes to our attention that this system actually incorporates five letters, K, Q, X, Y and Z, superfluous to the requirements of the Latin tongue. These were in fact specifically added for the purpose of writing Greek words, so thus even with the supposedly 'Roman' alphabet we start with a hybrid. We also need to bear in mind that Germanic carried not only the eighteen phonemes of Latin but an additional six distinctive of and to itself:
What seems to have happened, and here I am particualarly indebted to the work or Dr. Henrik Williams of Uppsala University, was that the parent Roman alphabet, subject to certain precise and consistent rules of transmogrification which can with little ingenuity be recovered, was indeed methodically re-engineered to produce the Elder futhark. It can in fact be readily demonstrated that all the original Latin letters were retained, the additional 'Greek' letters were used to represent five of the specifically Germanic phonemes, and a completely separate stave was invented to represent the sixth, for there was no available character in the twenty-three letter alphabet. Subsequently the alphabetical order was changed to a completely different sequence, presumably to reflect the existing, verbal order. We thus find ourselves with the twenty-four stave Elder futhark representing the totality of Germanic phonemes, albeit not in the same sequence nor consistently retaining the phonetic correspondences of the Roman alphabet:
Runestaves are of course immediately recognisable by their stark straight-line geometry, general vertical alignment and avoidance of the horizontal. And it is of course these general characteristics that enable us to recognise the Angerthas Moria as 'runic'. A closer inspection of the Elder futhark confirms that in almost all cases the entire stave consists of one, or at most two, vertical strokes of an apparently standard height in combination with one or more subsidiary strokes extend neither higher nor lower than their parent vertical. In addition, just as the horizontal is rigorously eschewed, so too is a single subsidiary stroke originating from the bottom of the stave as opposed to the top or part way down the vertical; an additional subsidiary stroke can however originate from the bottom. Incidentally, this seems to imply that the stave is written from the top down. Furthermore, in those cases where there is no vertical, it would appear that if the length of the angular strokes are measured they appear to correspond to the length of a full sized vertical stroke. In summary, then, it can reasonably be hypothesised that all but one of the staves of the futhark were re-engineered from the Roman originals according to a sophisticated and carefully designed template devised by possibly a single runemaster. Having once recovered this template it is reasonably straightforward to understand how the letters of the Roman alphabet, with their sometimes curvilinear and horizontal-embracing elements, were engineered:
There are twenty-three letters of the Roman alphabet; the twenty-fourth rune-stave had therefore of necessity to be invented.12
One idiosyncrasy of the Germanic runerow should be noted and that is the way in which from earliest times the twenty-four stave Elder futhark is divided into three aettir: three sets of eight staves each. There is no readily apparent linguistic reason why this should be so. Another intriguing characteristic, and one likewise upon which the academic debate is far from resolved, is the unusual feature of meaningful names for each individual rune-stave. Such names are also and conveniently acrophonic: the sound value of each forming the first phoneme of its own name, apart from the curiously solitary occasion when it forms the final phoneme:
elhaz.
Like modern English, the Greeks and Roman alphabets, at least for the Greeks and Romans themselves, had no proper names for their component letters and only a very few other systems, such as the Celtic ogham, ever seem to have shared this distinction with the futhark. Not withstanding these intriguing features, however, all that is actually necessary for a linguistically functional alphabetical system, as Professor Tolkien was well aware, is a phonetic value for each of the glyphs employed, be they letters or staves. Anything else is superfluous to this purpose and, as with the Angerthas, can be dispensed with. Not so with the futhark.
Of course it is important to remember that we are here considering only the Elder futhark. As noted, there were historically two other principal, but later and derivative, runerows: the Anglo-Frisian futhorc and the Younger futhark. Both represent later and somewhat specialised developments of the Elder futhark and both demonstrate various derivative and alternative forms. However, these later systems emerged in different circumstances and for different purposes and moreover when various phonetic changes had taken place within the now increasingly fragmented language.
Staves from all three futharks have in fact, either by accident or design, been incorporated albeit somewhat inconsistently into the Angerthas together with other, more idiosyncratic, sigils. Although the overall impression of runestaves is retained, Tolkien does not apply, nor indeed can be reasonably expected to apply, the hypothetical template. Furthermore, if the diacritical marks are ignored, thirty-six out of the fifty-eight Angerthas are left-right or up-down duplications of the same basic stave. Indeed, with no less than fifty-eight characters the Angerthas represent not just simple phenomes but allophones, or variant forms. In comparison we note that in 'recieved pronunciation' of British English forty-four phonemes are generally recognised, albeit including eleven dipthongs.
In the end, therefore, it becomes obvious that apart from the similarities of form, and indeed often identities, the Angerthas are in fact of a fundamentally different order to the runes of the Germanic futhark. They are used in a strictly mundane, never in an esoteric or magical context. There is no body of lore or myth surrounding them. They are not used for divinatory purposes. They are not derived, in however sophisticated a manner, from pre-existing alphabetic forms although the individual glyphs are obviously modelled on the Germanic runestaves. The Angerthas do not represent single phonemes of one language or even one group of dialects but rather miscellaneous collection of phenomes and their allophones deriving not from one language (Sindarin) but also from completely unrelated dwarvish tongue. The Angerthas are given no names and do not constellate into sub groups whereas the runes of the Elder futhark are traditionally all named and are grouped into three aettir of eight staves each, thus incidentally fascilitating a sophisticated cryptology and mystical numerology. In comparison the study of the Angerthas is ultimately a rather disappointing and limited exercise. But as for the study of the Germanic runes themselves we can perhaps turn to the words of Bilbo Baggins:
The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began,
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
Let others follow it who can!
This article is based on a paper given by the author to the Tolkien Society at University College, Oxford, September 1996.
Why did Tolkien not mention the runic systems of the time? Was it because of the unconscious influence on his work that would deem any mention of runic craft among the Eldar unnecessary?
If anyone has any information/memories about the runic systems, involving the Cirth please do not hesitate to share, or if you want to speak to me about it privately you may PM me on Yahoo messenger.
The tengwar in contrast were divided into several groups like that of Norse runes and bore symbolic names, which is more like the runic systems that are present today...
Namarie
Artanaro
Within this article by Michael Deacon Jnr. there are diagrams of the runes from the Lord of the Rings. I haven't mastered the computer well enough to get runic fonts to work let alone get it over here, but anyhow, where the runes are shown I'll just use this symbol so you know something is missing from the original article and the text will flow more clearly without my interuption. Hopefully those on this forum allready have a copy of the Lord of the Rings and you can just look there to see the runes. On with the article:
Professor Tolkien made few and relatively fleeting references to runes in his published works. But as a renowned sholar of Old English, and indeed of other Germanic tongues, he would surely have acquired some basic appreciation both of the esoteric significance and of the mundane utility of the runic futhark.1 And although when he chose to use runes in the course of his storytelling he did so within a mundane rather than an esoteric context, he nevertheless seems occasionally to hint at a magical significance. Note for example the passing references to 'runes of power' in the song of the dwarf Gimli in The Lord of the Rings:
...The world was fair, the mountains tall
In Elder Days before the fall
Of mighty kings in Nargothrond
And Gondolin, who now beyond
The Western Seas have passed away:
The world was fair in Durin's Day.
A king he was on carven throne
In many-pillared halls of stone
With golden roof and silver floor,
And runes of power upon the door...
This lay was sung whilst the Company were spending their second night in the Mines of Moria on their journey through the Misty Mountains to the elfland of Lorien. Soon, however, they were to encounter 'a single oblong block, about two feet high, upon which was laid a great slab of white stone.
"It looks like a tomb," muttered Frodo, and lent forwards with a curious sense of foreboding, to look more closely at it. Gandalf came quickly to his side. On the slab runes were deeply graven:
"These are Daeron's Runes, such as were used of old in Moria," said Gandalf. "Here is written in the tongues of Men and Dwarves: BALIN SON OF FUNDIN, LORD OF MORIA" !
Now whilst these characters are recognisably of a 'runic' nature, upon closer examination there are sigils here which cannot be recognised as belonging to any recorded futhark,2 others which appear in mutant forms and configurations. Upon even closer scrutiny, and having had the meaning conveniently decoded by the wizard Gandalf, it is obvious that the sound values of the individual characters, or staves, bear even less affinity to those of any known runerow. Our Professor, however, is well aware of such divergencies and in Appendix E to the Lord of the Rings goes into some detail as to the writing, spelling and pronunciation of words and names:
"The scripts and letters used in the Third Age were all ultimately of Elarin (Elvish) origin, and already at that time of great antiquity. They had reached the stage of full alphabetical development but older modes in which only the consonants were denoted by full letters were still in use...The alphabets 3 were of two main, and in origin independent, kinds: the Tengwar or Tiw, here translated as 'letters'; and the Certar or Cirth, translated as 'runes'. The Tengwar were devised for writing with brush or pen...(whereas) The Certar were devised and mostly used only for scratched or incised inscriptions...The Cirth...were long used only for inscribing names and brief memorials upon wood or stone. To that origin they owe their angular shapes, very similar to the runes of our times, though they differed from these in details and were wholly different in arrangement. The Cirth in their older and simpler form spread eastward in the Second Age and became known to many peoples, Men and Dwarves, and even to Orcs, all of whom altered them to suit their purpose and according to their skill or lack of it. One such simple form was still used by the Men of Dale, and a similar one by the Rohirrim.
But in Beleriand, before the end of the First Age, the Cirth, partly under the influence of the Tengwar of the Noldor, were rearranged and further developed. Their richest and most ordered form was known as the Alphabet of Daeron, since in Elvish tradition it was said to have been devised by Daeron, the minstrel and loremaster of King Thingol of Doriath... In the country of Eregion...the Alphabet of Daeron was maintained in use and passed thence to Moria, where it became the alphabet most favoured by the Dwarves...in later times it was most often called Angerthas Moria or the Long Rune-rows of Moria...The Certhas Daeron was originally devised to represent the sounds of Sindarin only...The extension and elaboration of this certhas was called in its older form Angerthas Daeron, since the additions to the old cirth and their reorganisation was attributed to Daeron. The principal additions, however, were actually most probably the inventions of the Noldor or Eregion, since they were used for the representation of sounds not found in Sindarin...In the rearrangement of the Angerthas the following principles are observable...: adding a stroke to a branch added 'voice'; reversing the certh indicated opening to a 'spirant'; placing the branch on both sides of the stem added voice and nasality...'4
It is clear, then, that our Professor was thinking of the Angerthas only as a mundane sequence of specefically linguistic characters. Despite the apparent hint in Gimli's lay, Tolkien after all awards his runes no hint of even primeval esoteric significance. Nor does he offer any instructive etymology for the term Angerthas itself. Quite clearly the Professor's runes never had, nor were intended to have, any fore than their face value as phonetic glyphs, being 'originally devised to represent the sounds of Sindarin only'. The 'runes of power upon the door' presumably therefore refer at most to an inscribed spell with the magic residing in the words of a language only incidentally utilising those particular sigils.
But isn't this overly disingenous? After all, Tolkien of all people would have been aware of the implications of the etymology of the word 'rune' itself. He would surely have known, as Thorsson 5 has more recently reminded us, of the word's essential meaning of 'mystery' or 'secret' in all the ancient Germanic dialects from Old Norse to Gothic. And that, apart from late borrowings, the word is in fact found only in the Germanic and Celtic language groups. From the Proto-Indo-European it would appear that there are two possible, but related, etymologies: *reu-(to roar or to whisper), as in a magical incantation, and *gwor-w-on-, cognate with the names of the Greek and Old Indic gods Ouranos and Varunna respectively, giving the meaning of 'magical binding'. The word seems thus to have carried magical connotations from the very beginning. In any case, a common Germanic root *runo- can be established from which the word developed, always to be used within an esoteric context. 6
The study of such context shows runic analysis to be valid on different levels: of sound or phonetic value, of symbolism and content, and, only finally, of physical representation in the form of ideograph or stave. The runes are thus not a mere 'alphabet', although they can be used as such in a mundane context, but in an esoteric context constitute a meta-language: a symbolic system through which meaning can be transmitted by the initiate above and beyond that of which natural language is capable. And it is by means of this meta-language that the initiate is enabled to interact with his or her spiritual environment.
Mythically, it is through the god of magic, Odinn, 7 that gods and men are able to recieve rune wisdom. Odinn is first to undergo initiation into the runic mysteries, as recounted in the Elder, or Poetic, Edda. Stanzas 138 and 139 of the song 'Havamal' 8 read:
I know that I hung
On the windy tree
All of nights nine,
Wounded by spear
And given to Odinn;
Myself to myself,
On that tree,
Which no man knows,
From what root it rises.
They dealt me no bread
Nor drinking horn,
I looked down,
I took up the runes
I took them screaming,
I fell back from there.
Apart from etymology, the existence of rune-magic is also adduced from archeological, runological and literary evidence. There are, indeed, many inscribed stones still extant which bear combinations of runes, often associated with other symbols, for which it is difficult if not impossible to offer a non-esoteric meaning. A number have been found specifically associated with and often interred in graves, evidently invoking some power either to ensure undisturbed rest or to prevent the dead from walking abroad. Runological evidence is widespread although sometimes more difficult to classify. Certainly many amulets and other artefacts have been found with apparently magical formulae in the form of runic inscriptions. Literary evidence is similarly widespread, not only in the form of poems from the Edda such as the Havamal but in many other sources from Tacitus to Bede. Indeed, reference to many different types of runes and their magical properties can be found: victory runes, luck runes, curse runes, runes for good health or for curing the sick, runes for protection, for success in love; so on and so on. 9 One of the best known literary references to a particular type of magical runes is found in the oft quoted story from Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica where one Imma, taken prisoner following a battle between the Mercians and the Northumbrians, could not be fettered by his captors because the chains persisted in falling from him. Magic was not unreasonably suspected and it was demanded of him if he knew the 'unfettering rune' and had with him the staves written out, 'such as men tell idle tales of', preventing him from being bound. This concept is indeed well attested and is particularly significant in view of the word's primeval etymology. Again, in the Havamal, when Odinn is claiming for himself a catalogue of rune-magical attributes there runs the passage: 'If man puts fetters on my limbs I chant such a charm as will let me escape. The fetters fly from my legs, the handcuffs from my wrists'. And we note here that the magic can be chanted, not of necessity written. The runes are not mere ideographs and are only as occasion demands rendered as such. They were surely spoken, or chanted, before they were written and the written form by no means encompasses the entirety of the runes. Now this all seems a far cry from the type of techno-magic employed by such figures as Gandalf. Indeed, one may perhaps surmise that due to the intimate identification of the runes with Germanic paganism Tolkein's Christian sentiments militated against any early thoughts he might have harboured in presenting the Angerthas as a magical system.
Whether utilised for mundane or magical purposes, archaeological evidence indicates that, as a coherent ideographic system, the Germanic runes can probably be dated to sometime prior to 50 CE. 10 But, whether or not a more precise date can ever be obtained, one characteristic of the runerow is obvious to the most untutored observer, namely the apparent resemblance of more than a few of the staves to various letters of the Roman alphabet:
The Roman and Germanic worlds had long been in contact, if not collision, at this period and it would seem quite possible, indeed more than probable, that some individual or small group set out systematically to re-engineer the Roman alphabet in order to create a specifically Germanic script. Not least because upon further examination it can be demonstrated that the runerow actually represents the totality of the Germanic phonemes. 11 It is thus, on one level at least, clearly designed to be used as an 'alphabetical' system for use within what was at that time a pre-literate society.
There has in fact been much debate over the precise origin of the twenty-four stave Eldar futhark although most commentators have settled for either a Roman, Greek, Etruscan or some sort of hybrid template. However, as the archaeological record indicates that before about 2000 CE the runes were apparently not known outside an area encompassing modern Denmark and that part of north-west Germany closest to it, southern Sweden and south-eastern Norway, the Roman option would appear to be the most obvious candidate: by this time, of course, the Roman Empire had been established for several generations just across the Rhine.
Focusing, then, on the twenty-three letter Roman alphabet it soon comes to our attention that this system actually incorporates five letters, K, Q, X, Y and Z, superfluous to the requirements of the Latin tongue. These were in fact specifically added for the purpose of writing Greek words, so thus even with the supposedly 'Roman' alphabet we start with a hybrid. We also need to bear in mind that Germanic carried not only the eighteen phonemes of Latin but an additional six distinctive of and to itself:
What seems to have happened, and here I am particualarly indebted to the work or Dr. Henrik Williams of Uppsala University, was that the parent Roman alphabet, subject to certain precise and consistent rules of transmogrification which can with little ingenuity be recovered, was indeed methodically re-engineered to produce the Elder futhark. It can in fact be readily demonstrated that all the original Latin letters were retained, the additional 'Greek' letters were used to represent five of the specifically Germanic phonemes, and a completely separate stave was invented to represent the sixth, for there was no available character in the twenty-three letter alphabet. Subsequently the alphabetical order was changed to a completely different sequence, presumably to reflect the existing, verbal order. We thus find ourselves with the twenty-four stave Elder futhark representing the totality of Germanic phonemes, albeit not in the same sequence nor consistently retaining the phonetic correspondences of the Roman alphabet:
Runestaves are of course immediately recognisable by their stark straight-line geometry, general vertical alignment and avoidance of the horizontal. And it is of course these general characteristics that enable us to recognise the Angerthas Moria as 'runic'. A closer inspection of the Elder futhark confirms that in almost all cases the entire stave consists of one, or at most two, vertical strokes of an apparently standard height in combination with one or more subsidiary strokes extend neither higher nor lower than their parent vertical. In addition, just as the horizontal is rigorously eschewed, so too is a single subsidiary stroke originating from the bottom of the stave as opposed to the top or part way down the vertical; an additional subsidiary stroke can however originate from the bottom. Incidentally, this seems to imply that the stave is written from the top down. Furthermore, in those cases where there is no vertical, it would appear that if the length of the angular strokes are measured they appear to correspond to the length of a full sized vertical stroke. In summary, then, it can reasonably be hypothesised that all but one of the staves of the futhark were re-engineered from the Roman originals according to a sophisticated and carefully designed template devised by possibly a single runemaster. Having once recovered this template it is reasonably straightforward to understand how the letters of the Roman alphabet, with their sometimes curvilinear and horizontal-embracing elements, were engineered:
There are twenty-three letters of the Roman alphabet; the twenty-fourth rune-stave had therefore of necessity to be invented.12
One idiosyncrasy of the Germanic runerow should be noted and that is the way in which from earliest times the twenty-four stave Elder futhark is divided into three aettir: three sets of eight staves each. There is no readily apparent linguistic reason why this should be so. Another intriguing characteristic, and one likewise upon which the academic debate is far from resolved, is the unusual feature of meaningful names for each individual rune-stave. Such names are also and conveniently acrophonic: the sound value of each forming the first phoneme of its own name, apart from the curiously solitary occasion when it forms the final phoneme:
elhaz.
Like modern English, the Greeks and Roman alphabets, at least for the Greeks and Romans themselves, had no proper names for their component letters and only a very few other systems, such as the Celtic ogham, ever seem to have shared this distinction with the futhark. Not withstanding these intriguing features, however, all that is actually necessary for a linguistically functional alphabetical system, as Professor Tolkien was well aware, is a phonetic value for each of the glyphs employed, be they letters or staves. Anything else is superfluous to this purpose and, as with the Angerthas, can be dispensed with. Not so with the futhark.
Of course it is important to remember that we are here considering only the Elder futhark. As noted, there were historically two other principal, but later and derivative, runerows: the Anglo-Frisian futhorc and the Younger futhark. Both represent later and somewhat specialised developments of the Elder futhark and both demonstrate various derivative and alternative forms. However, these later systems emerged in different circumstances and for different purposes and moreover when various phonetic changes had taken place within the now increasingly fragmented language.
Staves from all three futharks have in fact, either by accident or design, been incorporated albeit somewhat inconsistently into the Angerthas together with other, more idiosyncratic, sigils. Although the overall impression of runestaves is retained, Tolkien does not apply, nor indeed can be reasonably expected to apply, the hypothetical template. Furthermore, if the diacritical marks are ignored, thirty-six out of the fifty-eight Angerthas are left-right or up-down duplications of the same basic stave. Indeed, with no less than fifty-eight characters the Angerthas represent not just simple phenomes but allophones, or variant forms. In comparison we note that in 'recieved pronunciation' of British English forty-four phonemes are generally recognised, albeit including eleven dipthongs.
In the end, therefore, it becomes obvious that apart from the similarities of form, and indeed often identities, the Angerthas are in fact of a fundamentally different order to the runes of the Germanic futhark. They are used in a strictly mundane, never in an esoteric or magical context. There is no body of lore or myth surrounding them. They are not used for divinatory purposes. They are not derived, in however sophisticated a manner, from pre-existing alphabetic forms although the individual glyphs are obviously modelled on the Germanic runestaves. The Angerthas do not represent single phonemes of one language or even one group of dialects but rather miscellaneous collection of phenomes and their allophones deriving not from one language (Sindarin) but also from completely unrelated dwarvish tongue. The Angerthas are given no names and do not constellate into sub groups whereas the runes of the Elder futhark are traditionally all named and are grouped into three aettir of eight staves each, thus incidentally fascilitating a sophisticated cryptology and mystical numerology. In comparison the study of the Angerthas is ultimately a rather disappointing and limited exercise. But as for the study of the Germanic runes themselves we can perhaps turn to the words of Bilbo Baggins:
The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began,
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
Let others follow it who can!
This article is based on a paper given by the author to the Tolkien Society at University College, Oxford, September 1996.
Why did Tolkien not mention the runic systems of the time? Was it because of the unconscious influence on his work that would deem any mention of runic craft among the Eldar unnecessary?
If anyone has any information/memories about the runic systems, involving the Cirth please do not hesitate to share, or if you want to speak to me about it privately you may PM me on Yahoo messenger.
The tengwar in contrast were divided into several groups like that of Norse runes and bore symbolic names, which is more like the runic systems that are present today...
Namarie
Artanaro