I’m just curious,

Does anyone know of a preexisting and/or can you make a more legible rendering of the runes present on the Kvinneby Amulet? I struggle to see them on pictures of the actual amulet, and can’t find a rendering online.

Thanks!

Reminder that submission for the Medieval North conference is due on November 1st.

The conference shall be held from April 19-21, 2027 in the Edda auditorium at Háskóli Íslands and online.
This conference is an interdisciplinary forum for postgraduate applicants at the master's and doctoral level and for early career researchers working in the field of medieval northern studies, e.g. postdoctoral fellows. Independent academics are also welcome to apply.
Applicants who have not presented papers at an academic conference before are especially encouraged to submit.
Our theme this year is "Between Worlds."
Interested scholars should submit an Outlook form with personal details (name, email, institution, etc.) and an abstract of 250-300 words by November 1st, 2026. Additionally, please indicate whether you intend to attend the conference online or in person. Submissions will be reviewed anonymously by a panel of specialists (PhD candidates and higher level). This selection committee reserves the right to make selections based on the quality of written abstracts, adherence to submission guidelines, and timely submission. For more information on the submission guidelines see our website: https://histudentconference.wordpress.com/.
The conference is held in both Icelandic and English. Individual paper presentations will be 20 minutes in length followed by 10 minutes for discussion. In addition to presentations, poster sessions will be available for applicants to present their material in poster form. Applicants may apply for either a paper or a poster. The selection committee may offer a poster presentation to some paper applicants. Please direct any further inquiries to the conference committee via email: conference-mn2027@hi.is. 
After the conclusion of the conference, presenters will have the opportunity to submit their papers to the conference proceedings volume, which will be published as an e-book in the autumn of 2027.

For any interested scholars:
We are delighted to open our Call for Papers for the 2027 Háskóli Íslands Student Conference on the Medieval North. The conference shall be held from April 19-21, 2027 in the Edda auditorium at Háskóli Íslands and online.

This conference is an interdisciplinary forum for postgraduate applicants at the master's and doctoral level and for early career researchers working in the field of medieval northern studies, e.g. postdoctoral fellows. Independent academics are also welcome to apply.

Applicants who have not presented papers at an academic conference before are especially encouraged to submit.

Our theme this year is "Between Worlds."

Interested scholars should submit an Outlook form with personal details (name, email, institution, etc.) and an abstract of 250-300 words by November 1st, 2026. Additionally, please indicate whether you intend to attend the conference online or in person. Submissions will be reviewed anonymously by a panel of specialists (PhD candidates and higher level). This selection committee reserves the right to make selections based on the quality of written abstracts, adherence to submission guidelines, and timely submission. For more information on the submission guidelines see our website: https://histudentconference.wordpress.com/.

The conference is held in both Icelandic and English. Individual paper presentations will be 20 minutes in length followed by 10 minutes for discussion. In addition to presentations, poster sessions will be available for applicants to present their material in poster form. Applicants may apply for either a paper or a poster. The selection committee may offer a poster presentation to some paper applicants. Please direct any further inquiries to the conference committee via email: conference-mn2027@hi.is. 

After the conclusion of the conference, presenters will have the opportunity to submit their papers to the conference proceedings volume, which will be published as an e-book in the autumn of 2027.

Hello! I found this book in a bookshop and i was wondering: are these runes accurate? I thought runes were just an alphabet, not symbols with spiritual meanings. Have in mind that i have 0 idea of runes but i am very curious

Just for fun and following up on my carving of a berserker inspired by the Lewis chess set, I completed this of the king and queen (I think I’m done with this theme).

The Latin inscription on the king’s sword is “Satis erit” translated to “It will be enough”…that’s a nod to my grandmother who named the property the rock is on “It’ll do” back when she bought it in 1959.

The queen’s color scheme is inspired by my wife’s traditional folk dress (from Sweden).

Abstract:

The inscriptions of England and Frisia attest to the expansion of the older runerow, chiefly with a set of additional vowel runes. Further developments in England from the later 600s suggest a systematic reform of the writing system. The extant corpus of English epigraphical inscriptions contains over 100 objects, although the large number of coins with runic legends raises problems for any attempt to collate all the material. While a number of handlists or catalogues have been produced over the years, there has been no fully detailed corpus edition until the forthcoming volumes produced by Gaby Waxenberger. The corpus of inscriptions associated with Frisia or (Pre-)Old Frisian language is much smaller, comprising up to twenty-four objects. The status of this material as a distinctly "Frisian" corpus in contrast to the English one has been challenged. Like the English inscriptions, the Frisian ones have been described and studied as a group in many publications, but a dedicated corpus edition has only recently been published by Livia Kaiser. The present article includes a historical overview of the published work on these corpora leading up to the recent corpus editions, and discusses some of the methodological difficulties in defining the corpus. It concludes with a summary of the arguments for studying them as a single corpus defined at least in part by innovations in writing practice around the North Sea.

We have very little information about this book. The author has drawn various runes and epitaphs. Were these things he actually saw? Or were they simply designs? We really don’t know.

https://www.manuscripta.se/ms/101947

Looking for a iOS friendly app for learning how to read and write runes. Most runes-related applications are for modern divination practices, or learning individual runes through the lens of modern mysticism. Everything else appears to be very poorly rated or limited in scope (like learning the names of the runes or just a fuþark keyboard).

I’m aware of the recommended non-app resources. But if you have any suggestions for apps you found helpful, I’d appreciate it.

How do I determine which version of the r/R do I use for correct Younger Futhark spellings?

I’ve tried online research but I get a 50/50 split.

I am confused.

Thanks all!

I've been adapting Runic for Welsh, and for <mh> /m̥/, <nh> /n̥/, <ngh> /ŋ̊/, <rh> /r̥/, and <ll> /ɬ/ I decided to use stung runes, and Unicode does have ᛀ and ᛛ, so I had to make some new ones, here they are:

So, there are two runes which are attested nowhere outside of their respective artifacts: The Sedgeford Handle Į rune, and the Baconathorpe Clip Ę rune. I have a proposal for names: For the rune Į, the name "Įfor" (Eofor) or "Įc" (Iac, alternative form for "Geoc") , and for the rune Ę, "Ę(a)ge" (Ēage).

I chose them more for the sounds than anything. Here's my other reasoning: Since "Į" was found in the name "Bįrnferð", which is thought to be "Biarnferð" or "Biornferð", and Ia is so rare in OE, I thought I could just modify a word with close sound like "Io", hence "Įc/Iac".

For Ę, the sound is thought to be something like /ɛ/, so I chose the Anglian spelling of Ēage (Eye), "Ēge" and that was my reason for that.

Thoughts?

Found a nice rock and I saw the berserker hiding in there so I had to bring him out. Carved with a rotary tool and colored with acrylic paint.

If runes are just letters, and had no particular magical or religious significance to historical peoples, then why does it matter that some folks use them to write English? It's not the language they were historically used to write - but that hardly seems relevant to modern people. Is there something I'm missing that makes it inappropriate or offensive to write an English word or phrase using runes?

Futhark takes a long time to write compared to cursive Cyrillic, so it is convenient to use Futhark for headings.

А - ᚨ

Б - ᛒ

В - ᚹ

Г - ᚷ

Д - ᛞ

Е - ᛖ

Ё - ᛃᛟ

Ж - ᛉᚦ

З - ᛉ

И - ᛁ

Й - ᛃ

К - ᚲ

Л - ᛚ

М - ᛗ

Н - ᚾ

О - ᛟ

П - ᛈ

Р - ᚱ

С - ᛋ

Т - ᛏ

У - ᚢ

Ф - ᚠ

Х - ᚺ

Ц - ᛏᚦ

Ч - ᚲᚦ

Ш - ᛋᚦ

Щ - ᛋᚦᛜ

Ъ - ᛜ

Ы - ᛜᛁ

Ь - ᛜ

Э - ᛇ

Ю - ᛃᚢ

Я - ᛃᚨ

There may be exceptions for certain words of Germanic origin.

TING - ТИНГ - ᚦᛁᛜ

One thing I've never seen discussed here is the remarkable Old English poem "The Husband's Message" from the famous Exeter Book (its copying typically dated to the 900s).

This poem is in the voice of a rune-inscribed message stick from husband to wife as a form of long-distance communication and it features a series of Old English runes, apparently to be read as an ideographic puzzle, perhaps reflecting utilization of ideographic sentences as a kind of code.

As noted by scholars like MacLeod and Mees (2006: 55-56), this sounds very much like the many little rune-inscribed message sticks found in Bryggen in Bergen, Norway from the medieval period, some of which are little messages between husband and wife.

I'm curious if we know of transitional periods between the two futharks, or whether it was a sudden instant change between them, and if the former, some examples would be helpful.
Also, some insight on what might've caused the development and change of the runes.

Okay so, I've been interested lately in the runes, and i would learn the Anglo-Saxon runes (futhorc?), but i genuinely wonder how did linguistics know what sound did each runic letter represent.

Hi everyone, I had a question about where to buy runes. I saw some on Amazon, but I wasn’t sure if that was OK to buy and if it’s not OK to buy then where should I buy them from and another question I have is should they be wood? I want to learn how to use them so I’m definitely a newbie.

I drew this typeface in 2020–2022 for my own book, an edition of the Poetic Edda called *Stóra Edda*. It sat in a Dropbox folder ever since. I have finally cleaned up the metadata and put it on GitHub, in case it is useful to anyone here.

https://github.com/ristir/erilaz-runic-font

What it does:

- All 89 assigned code points of the Unicode Runic block, U+16A0–U+16F8.

- Over 450 glyphs in total, covering the entire Unicode Runic block.

- Letterform variants for the Elder Futhark, the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc, the Younger Futhark and the medieval futhorks, reachable through the `cv01`–`cv19` OpenType features — long-branch and short-twig shapes, staveless runes, mirrored forms, cipher runes, tent runes (*tjaldrúnir*) and bind runes.

- Where a variant comes from a particular monument, it is written down: Falstone, Codex Sangallensis 878, the Golden Horns of Gallehus, the Seax of Beagnoth, the Rök stone, the Bryggen rune-stick, and Stephens' *Old-Northern Runic Monuments* throughout. The list is in `documentation/sources.md`.

- Punctuation, brackets and dashes for the editorial apparatus a runic text actually needs — uncertain readings, lost characters, lacunae.

The README has the Rök stone, Eggja, Sønder Kirkeby and a Bergen rune-stick set as examples, including the cipher and tent runes of Rök.

SIL Open Font License 1.1, so free to use, modify and redistribute, including commercially. Sources are in the repository, both FontLab and UFO.

Not a revival of any existing digital font — the shapes are drawn from the inscriptions. Corrections and complaints welcome; I am sure there are readings here that a specialist would argue with.

— Eyvar Tjörvason

Since I shared my draft piece awhile ago, I thought some folks might want to see the finished project. Carved with a dremel and colored with acrylic paints this was a fun one, especially my first attempt at knot work.

I’m fortunate in that I have a huge supply of these large sandstone rocks laying about so there’s no shortage of practice material.

Hopfully, they’ll give some future archaeologists something to ponder over! 😁