By Phil Taterczynski
and Roger Raupp
A band of adventurers is tramping
through what seems like miles of endless,
featureless corridors, devoid of any
traces of the enemy, when all of a sudden
a fighter
notices a set of symbols carved
in the wall. “What do they say?” he
mutters.
The thief moves forward to apply his
skill. “These are runes,” he says, “fortunately
of the common sort. I think I can
read them. . . .” He concentrates for
a
moment, then adds, “They warn of deadly
peril ahead for any who are brave
enough to pass.”
Runes are one of the oldest forms of
writing known to exist in western Europe
and Scandinavia. They were used extensively
by the cultures of those areas in
pre-medieval and medieval times.
Since this era roughly parallels the
time frame of most adventure gaming
campaigns, referees might find it useful
to incorporate runes into their fantasy
settings.
A modern dictionary defines a “rune”
as a letter in one of several old Germanic
alphabets, or simply as an occult symbol.
The word “rune” translates from Old
Germanic as “secret lore”; in Anglo-
Saxon, the same word means “secret.” A
similar Anglo-Saxon word, “runa,” translates
to “magician”; another similar
word, “runar,” which is Norse, means
“friend.” All of these descriptive words
relate to the history of the rune — a
past
often blurred by superstition, myth and
misinterpretation.
Scandinavian legends offer varying
accounts of how runes were discovered;
even today it is a popular misconception
that runes were developed in those lands.
The following is an excerpt from the
poem Havamal (Sayings of the High
One), words of wisdom as spoken by
Odin, the chief god of Norse mythology.
In this account, Odin
finds a runic alphabet
at the price of many torments:
l know that I hung
from the windy tree,
For all of nine
nights, stuck by a spear,
Given to Odin, myself
to myself;
Of that tree, no
one knows whence run its roots.
I was brought no
bread, no horn to drink from.
I gazed down, then
grasped the runes,
Crying aloud, finally
I fell.
You shall find runes
and read the staves
Great strong staves,
great mighty letters,
The mighty sage
wrote them,
Given by the gods,
made by their chief.
Do you know how
to write?
Do you know how
to read?
Another Norse myth relates how a
Valkyrie (one of the female warrior-servants
of the Norse gods who carried
away men slain in battle) gave the mighty
hero Sigurd the knowledge of how to use
magic runes and also obtain the favor
of
Tyr, the god of war: “For victory one
should carve Runes in thy sword-hilt and
twice name Tyr.”
Germans got the
idea first
Though these tales from folklore are
interesting, they do not tell the entire
truth of the matter. Actually, it is among
the early Germanic people — not the
Norsemen
— that the history of the rune
begins. The Germanic people lived in
northern Europe from the time of the earliest
surviving descriptions of the lands
north of the Alps. A Roman historian
named Posidonius, who died in 50 B.C.,
mentioned the Germans in his books of
histories. In A.D. 98, Cornelius Tacitus
wrote detailed accounts of the Germanic
tribes in a book called Germania. These
tribes appear in later historical references
as the barbarian Vandals, Goths,
Lombards, Franks, Teutons, Angles and
others who kept the Romans busy in the
final days of their empire.
The Germans, according to Tacitus,
had a high regard for omens, and used
sticks, each marked with a different sign,
to cast fortunes. The signs used on the
sticks may not literally have been runes,
but this is where the history of runes
starts.
In earlier times, the Germanic tribes
and their forerunners used written or
carved symbols as representations of
events, ideas, and objects. These were
not runes, in the sense that the term
is
defined here, but they could be considered
descendants of runes. Carvings
from the late Bronze Age and early Iron
Age, some made as long ago as 1600
B.C., are found on the rocks throughout
Scandinavia, particularly in Sweden.
These prehistoric symbols, known as
Hallristningar, represent man and nature:
tools, body parts, animals, and sun
symbols. (The era during which these
marks were originally scribed can be
considered prehistoric, since the people
of these lands were at the time far more
primitive than the Greeks or Egyptians
to
the south.)
It is believed that these symbols carried
deep religious and mystic significance,
showing in pictures the power of
the things they represented. These symbols
were apparently not used as a form
of writing, although it is reasonable
to
assume that the people who used them
gave names to each one. A modern example
of the same principle is the skulland-
crossbones symbol, which conveys
a meaning of “poison” or “danger” to
someone viewing it, but is not actually
a
word, or part of our alphabet, in itself.
Theories of the origin of runes
Inscriptions using letters resembling
runes appear in rock carvings found
near the Alps dating from about A.D.
235. They are clearly related to later
runes, and many letters also look similar
to their Latin counterparts. These symbols
are thought by some to have belonged
to the Etruscans, a tribe from
northern Italy.
But authorities don’t all agree on the
exact time and place of the origin of
runes. The alphabets of the Etruscans,
Romans, Greeks,
Illyrians, and Phoenicians,
as well as the Hallristningar, have
all been proposed as the particular or
primary source. The most popular theory
on the origin of runes incorporates
several of the possible answers: The
Germanic tribes, coming into close and
frequent contact with literate cultures,
could well have taken the idea of an alphabet
and used it. If such was the case,
they could have easily borrowed symbols
from the alphabet of their neighboring
tribe, the Etruscans.
In about A.D. 350, the Romans began
to hire German mercenaries to fight beside
their own legions. This would have
given the Germans very close contact
with the Roman culture and also its alphabet,
as well as the opportunity to
travel throughout the Mediterranean. In
such travels the Germans could also
have come in contact with the writing
systems of the Greeks and other more
remote cultures. When the mercenaries
came home, they most likely brought
with them influences from all these
encounters.
Why runes look the
way they do
The origin of runes may be disputed,
but why they are formed as they are is
not. Whether runes are Germanic, Scandinavian,
or another of many types, one
thing is consistent: The letters are stiff
and angular, usually composed of vertical
or perpendicular staves, only rarely
(if ever) horizontal ones. The early Germanic
tribes were barbaric in comparison
to the cultures of the Mediterranean
whose alphabets descended from scripts
painted or inked on various surfaces or
incised in soft materials like plaster
or
clay. In contrast, wood and stone were
the materials most readily available for
scribing in the north. Germanic symbols
had to be simple in form so they were
easy to carve into those difficult surfaces.
When the Germans used wood (as
was most common), they carved runes
along the length of a tree limb or slab
of
wood with one side shaved flat. Horizontal
staves are less frequent in the characters,
since carving a horizontal stave
could split the grain and mar the work.
For more permanent inscriptions, the
Germans used stone. Later, as metalworking
developed, they inscribed various
sorts of finished metal items.
After their creation, runes were quickly
adopted by all the Germanic peoples.
For a period of time, Hallristningar symbols
and runes appeared in the same
carvings. A spearhead dating from the
third century A.D., found near Kovel,
in
the western Ukraine, is engraved with
both kinds of markings. At that time and
until around A.D. 500, the German tribes
were invading and warring with the Roman
Empire, and were constantly on the
move. Migrations and wars brought
many different tribes into contact, and
this undoubtedly helped spread runes
through the entire Germanic world.
In the early days of their existence,
runes were used almost exclusively for
one of two purposes: for inscriptions
and
(in the minds of the superstitious, at
least) for magic.
Many of the inscriptions were memorials
to-dead friends. or kinsmen, a memento
of a visit, or something referring
to the craftsman or builder of the inscribed
item. Norse mercenaries in the
employ of the Byzantine Emperor carved
runes on a statue of a lion in Piraeus,
Greece. A runic inscription found at
Kingitorissoak, Greenland, reads: “Erling
Sighvatsson and Bjarni Thordarson and
Endridi Jonsson on the Saturday before
the minor Rogation Day built these
cairns.”
Such rune-stones can be found in any
of the lands where the Scandinavians
lived. Today there are some 2,500 known
to exist in Sweden alone, with another
1,500 scattered all over Norway, Denmark,
Iceland, Greenland, Finland, the
USSR, and even North America.
Other inscriptions can be found on
weapons, jewelry and coins. Runes were
scratched on weapons to label them with
the names of the owner, the maker, the
owner’s patron deity, or the weapon itself.
The Kovel spearhead, mentioned
above, carries the name “Attacker.” The
Chessel Down sword, found in a Jutish
grave on the Isle of Wight, has on it
the
words “increase to pain.” The runes on
this sword show Anglo-Saxon influences,
which indicates that it was forged by
Danes or their descendants living in
England.
On the rim of a gold drinking horn recovered
in Germany there was found the
inscription: “I, Hlewegast, Holt’s son,
made this horn.” The horn itself was
decorated with hunting and battle scenes
resembling those found on rune-stones.
The use of runes on coins had begun
by the time of the Anglo-Saxon kings
Pada, who ruled from 655 to 657, and
Ethelred (675-704). They have their
names on coins minted in the kingdom
of Mercia. A coin from East Anglia contains
a runic inscription commemorating
King Ethelbert, who died in 794.
Over the years, runic alphabets developed
into many different forms. Often
runes themselves looked the same, but
what they represented differed from
kingdom to kingdom. Today all the different
runic alphabets are generally categorized
into three types: Germanic,
Scandinavian, and Anglo-Saxon.
The “futhark”
system
Though the values, form, and/or the
total number of characters in each runic
alphabet often was different, during and
after the height of their use they were
nearly always organized in a system
called the “futhark,” which was an arrangement
of the runes in an alphabet
into five divisions, the first of which
spelled the word “futhark” (or a similar
word, depending on the country).
It is possible the “futhark” arrangement
was adopted from a Celtic
writing
system called Ogham, which was distinctly
different from runes; this writing
consisted of slashes cut into the corner
of a beam or stone, but they were arranged
into divisions in a like manner.
In the year 1000, Iceland
became a
Christian nation by vote in the Althing,
the national assembly. Greenland
was
converted within a few more years; this
turn of events
led to the adoption of the
Roman alphabet in those areas, and so
to the passing of the last of the runic
scripts.
The church was indirectly responsible
for the decline in the use of runes in
most
cases. Along with fostering the spread
of
Christianity, it also encouraged literacy
and education. Latin was the alphabet,
and the language, that churchmen taught
to converts. Since the runic alphabets
had never been widely developed into a
manuscript form, the Roman letters became
more popular, and thus the full development
of runes into a manuscript
language never took place. An exception
to the norm was a Goth named Wulfilas,
who was working to bring Christianity
to
his people. He translated the Bible into
the Gothic language and invented a
script which used many rune-like letters.
Though the church didn’t always actively
try to suppress the use of runes, no
doubt some parishes did. Even after the
Roman alphabet had become widely
used, some parts of the population held
on to the use of runes. They were mostly
loremasters and poets, those who maintained
the legends and knowledge of
their societies’ pre-Christian cultures.
Much of this knowledge was frowned
upon by advocates of the church as being
paganism, black magic, and contrary
and offensive to the ways of the church.
Runic writing was looked on with equal
disfavor, considered to have mystic properties
because it was the means by which
these “pagans” recorded their thoughts
and recollections.
Runes have resurfaced in history since
their decline, but only in isolated cases.
Two Swedish military leaders used runes:
Admiral Mogens Gyldenstjerne, in the
year 1543, kept a private journal written
in runes. General Jacob de la Gardie
used a runic military code system during
the Thirty Years’ War in the early 17th
century. The use of runes as a craftsman’s
mark survived among guilds and
other artisans’ groups. Adolf Hitler,
in his
efforts to incorporate Teutonic mythology
into Nazi ideology, used runic and
Hallristningar symbols. Two outstanding
examples are the swastika, a mystic
sign which was originally a sun symbol,
and the double sig (victory) emblem
worn by SS troops.
Recently, the popularity of fantasy literature
— spearheaded by the publication
of the work of J.R.R.
Tolkien — has
brought about a renewed interest in
runes. Different authors have devised
different runic alphabets for use in their
works, prompting more people than ever
before to wonder where the whole idea
came from.
All of the foregoing offers an overview
of how runes came about and where they
went, and a bit about how they were used
along the way. Unfortunately, few accounts
have survived about the actual
use of runes by, and their effect upon,
historical personages; little is known
about the “inside story” of runes during
the Dark Ages. However, one such legendary
tale involving an actual person
does exist, though the story may have
been exaggerated over the years.
Egil
Skallagrimsson and his saga
The tale of Egil Skallagrimsson survives
as one of the legends of the Vikings
— stories which are well-known, and
rightly so, for they offer an inside view
of
a dynamic young society. Although these
stories were finally written down during
the Christian period, many of them were
maintained through generations of oral
story-telling going back to pagan times.
Iceland became
the home of the majority
of the surviving manuscripts, and the
Icelandic scribes for the most part failed
to succumb to the temptation many
clerical copyists felt to Christianize
their
cultures’ tales. Thus, the Viking sagas
present a reasonably dependable portrait
of pagan Nordic society. But, since
Iceland was and remains the home of the
sagas, it is no surprise that the central
figures in most of them are Icelanders.
One such figure, Egil Skallagrimsson,
a warrior and rune-master, is told about
in a tale called simply Egil’s Saga. The
story contains several passages and
parts that describe Egil using runes for
various purposes, including healing,
the
placing of curses, and detection. These
accounts were written sometime around
the year 1230, telling of events that
took
place from the years 858 to 990, beginning
with the story of Egil’s father and
uncle and ending with Egil’s death. Two
of the tales are summarized below:
Egil, his comrade Olvir, and their crew
were travelling by ship and landed on
Atley Island, one of the estates of King
Eirik Bloodaxe. The caretaker of the
King’s land, a man named Bard, offered
to let Egil, Olvir, and the men stay in
a
barn, gave them straw for bedding, and
only bread, sour curds, and skyr (a sour,
partially fermented whey drink), to eat,
claiming he had nothing better. Meanwhile
King Eirik and his wife Gunnhild
were in the main hall, presiding over
a
feast. The king asked where his caretaker
was, and a man replied that “Bard is
out looking after his guests.”
“What sort of guests are these,” said
the king, “that he’d rather be with them
than here with us?” The man replied that
they were some of the Chieftain Thorir’s
men, which indeed Egil and the others
were.
"... THE HORN BURST ASUNDER,
SPLASHING THE POISONED ALE TO
THE FLOOR."
“Go out and inform them,” said the
king, “that I want them to come inside.”
Egil, Olvir, and their men were welcomed
warmly by the king. Olvir sat at
the king’s side, with Egil next to them,
and they all drank toasts (refusing would
have been a slight to the king) until
Olvir’s
men became quite intoxicated. Bard,
displeased with how things had turned
out, pressed one ale-filled horn after
another on Olvir, hoping to embarrass
him. Egil, however, began to drink Olvir’s
share. Bard remarked how great Egil’s
thirst was and passed him another full
horn. Egil took the horn and spoke this
verse:
“You spoke to this ogre-slayer of a
scanty feast
While there was a sacrifice — a
woman’s cunning.
It was a badly kept secret, your
unseen guests,
This meanness lasted too long,
small-hearted Bard.”
Bard told him to drink and stop being
abusive, whereupon Egil drank all that
was proferred to himself and Olvir.
Then Bard turned to the queen and
complained that this man was insulting
his hosts by claiming to be thirsty no
matter how much he was given. The
queen and Bard conspired to put poison
in a drink, and the queen gave it to Egil,
ordering him to quaff it.
Egil brought out his knife and stabbed
his palm, then took the horn, carved
runes into it, and smeared them with his
blood while saying:
“Cut runes in the horn.
Redden them with
blood.
Then speak the words of the rite, a
poem over the horn.
Drink this draught who will, the
glad maid’s gift,
But note which mouth it’s meant for,
this ale Bard has signed.”
Egil killed Bard that same night, and in
so doing earned the lasting enmity of
Eirik and Gunnhild.
The second tale takes place sometime
later, when Egil returned to Norway to
pursue a lawsuit concerning his wife’s
inheritance. King Eirik declared him an
outlaw; in retaliation, Egil attacked
the
king’s hall on the Isle of Herle and killed
the king’s son Rognvald.
After the battle, when his crew was
ready to sail, Egil climbed onto a rock
outcropping on the island that faced the
mainland of Norway. He took a horse’s
head and set it on a hazelwood staff,
saying, “Here I set up a staff of scorn,
and place this scorn on the hand of King
Eirik and Queen Gunnhild.”
He then pointed the horse’s head toward
the mainland and continued, “And I
place this also on the spirits of the
land,
that they all should be lost and unsettled,
until they drive King Eirik and Queen
Gunnhild from this land.” Egil stuck the
staff between the rocks and left it there
with the head facing the mainland, cut
runes in the staff to proclaim his speech,
and returned to his men to set sail.
Egil’s curse was fulfilled, or so it would
seem: King Eirik’s brother, Haakon, returned
from a stay in England soon afterward.
The brothers shared the kingship
for a while, but Haakon eventually
drove Eirik from the throne.
Using runes in role-playing
After learning the legendary and historical
facts about runes, many referees
and players in fantasy role-playing games
can easily imagine how runes can be
used in an adventure or a campaign.
Runic alphabets can be designed as a
form of code; cryptic messages could be
found carved into walls, doors, monuments
or whatever, as memorials or
warnings. A character’s weapons and
armor might carry runic inscriptions of
the equipment’s name or the name of its
(past or present) owner.
In an AD&D™
campaign, the DM might
allow magic-users to carve runes for the
casting of some spells instead of using
"HERE I SET UP A STAFF OF SCORN, AND
PLACE THIS SCORN ON THE HAND OF
KING EIRIK AND QUEEN GUNNHILD."
material components. If a referee allows
characters to learn a runic alphabet,
the
character may use it to mark maps, write
spells into spell books, or send messages.
The possibilities for using runes in
gaming seem great, but there are some
limiting factors to keep in mind. If only
one culture uses runes, fine. But if several
do, then similarities and differences
between the various systems should be
accounted for. Are these cultures living
in close proximity to one another? If
so,
is there then a reason for their runes
to
illustrate influences gained from one
another? For instance, if a fairly civilized
group of elves, who had long been developing
their linguistic and writing
skills, lived next to a society of humans
that had only recently (in elvish terms)
developed, and if they both have runic
alphabets, chances are great that the
humans’ alphabet demonstrates a lot of
elvish influence. When considering the
runic system of a particular culture in
a
world where runes are in widespread
use, a DM should be able to answer these
questions: Did this culture develop their
runes or borrow them from someone
else? If so, who? When? How? And why?
If a society or culture in a campaign
develops runes independently, then the
materials they use for carving must be
considered when determining how the
rune characters are designed. Earlier
it
was explained how the Germans had
very simple runes that had either vertical
or perpendicular staves, because such
a
formation was easiest to carve into wood,
their most abundant material. In a fantasy
campaign, dwarves who created their
runes for carving into stone or metal
wouldn’t be restricted by such a form,
since most metal and stone doesn’t have
a “grain.” However, they would still
probably use straight staves, to keep
carving fairly efficient. A culture which
used runes in a script form, instead of
in
carvings, would most likely form the
characters for ease of writing with a
pen
or brush.
Once the general method of employment
of runes in a campaign has been
laid out, it then becomes necessary to
develop a system for creating runic alphabets,
matching symbols to sounds,
and scribing the runes. A “Common
Tongue” runic alphabet is offered with
this article. This alphabet, or a form
of it,
may be usable as a starting point, since
the common tongue is generally known
by most AD&D
characters. Much of the
following system can be incorporated
into other alphabets.
The Common Tongue runes were designed
under the assumption that the
common tongue is equivalent to English,
since that is in fact the “common tongue”
most of us know in real life, and since
English and the AD&D
common tongue
both are combinations of many different
languages.
The Common Tongue runic alphabet
(pictured on the following page) has a
few more symbols than the twenty-six
letters of the English alphabet of today.
This is justified by the likelihood of
the
different evolution of such a language
in
a fantasy campaign. A writing system
that developed without the influences
that affected the English language quite
possibly might have individual symbols
for sounds which can only be obtained
in
English by a compound-letter form (such
as “ch” or “th”). Also, to speed the carving
of runes, symbols would likely be
created for commonly used words, so a
thing or a concept could be expressed
with one character instead of a series
of
characters.
Another aspect of English that might
be awkward for someone trying to learn
the language is that words are not always
pronounced the way they seem to
sound. In a fantasy world where a truly
universal Common Tongue would have
developed, the language would probably
not exhibit such tendencies, or the
inaccuracies, if they once did exist,
might
have been eradicated over time.
To translate scribed runes into English
words, consider how a letter sounds instead
of just how it looks, because some
letter-symbols in English represent the
same sounds. To translate the other way
(from English into runes to be carved),
break the English words down phonetically
and spell them as they sound.
In the Common Tongue runes, there
are more vowel sounds given than there
are vowel characters in English. This
is
done so that the sound a vowel (or vowel
combination) makes can be accurately
depicted. Using similar reasoning, consonant
characters that represent sounds
similar or identical to other consonants
have been eliminated: for instance, the
letter “c” does not exist in this alphabet,
since the sound it makes in a word can
be expressed by an “s” or “k” character.
Players and DMs have to consider
what sorts of materials and techniques
are available for scribing or writing
the
runes onto a surface. Geography will
have an effect on available materials,
just
as it did with the Germanic tribes. Tree
limbs and large rocks, for instance, were
in abundance where the Germanic tribes
lived. In a fantasy environment that contains
large trees and rocks, these would
be obvious and often-used surfaces for
carving. But in a world devoid of trees
or
rocks (a distinct possibility in a fantasy
milieu), choices for a carving medium
would be restricted to other suitable
materials that are available.
Runescan be carved on manufactured
items — rings, weapons, gauntlets, and
so forth. Even a world that doesn’t contain
an abundance of suitable raw materials
will have weapons, magic items,
and other things that can be inscribed.
Runes can be written (applied upon a
surface instead of being etched into it)
on almost any material that will accept
ink, pigment, charcoal, or other writing
mediums. Parchment, animal hide, or —
for the very lavish — vellum (calf’s hide
finely tanned and scraped) will hold ink
from a quill or pigment from a brush.
Historically, certain techniques were
used in the configuration of rune characters
in or on a surface. On free-standing
stones (rune-stones), the characters
were often carved between parallel borders
in the form of a winding “snake”
design which served to embellish the
work and make the stone more attractive.
A less artistic method of carving was
to simply put down the characters in
“rune-rows,” set off from one another
by
straight horizontal lines, often spaced
so
that the tops and bottoms of the rune
characters touched the lines.
Words were not usually set off by spaces
between them; rather, one would be
separated from the next by a dot or a
small “x.” Words were also distinguished
by painting them in different colors,
but
if the coloring washed away or was worn
away, the message could become rather
cryptic. According to many legends (including
Egil’s Saga), the magic of runes
would not work unless the writing was
smeared with blood.
As with any other subject that has a
foundation in history, the concept of
runes can be adapted by players and
DMs for use in a fantasy role-playing
game, without necessarily remaining totally
faithful to the way runes were used
in history. Perhaps a runic alphabet will
be developed into the most widely used
form of communication in a fantasy
world. Or, perhaps the “art” of scribing
runes will be only partially developed
and known only to a select few. Any system
is appropriate, as long as it’s logical
and as long as it “fits” in the world
for
which it was designed.
OUT ON A LIMB
Someone cares
Dear Mr. Editor:
In issue #69 in the article “Runes in history”
you mention one King Eirik Bloodaxe. I
salute
you. Most people refuse to accept an original
Norwegian spelling of a contemporary name.
Editors of most other periodicals and
magazines
make the oversight of assuming their
reporters are at fault. Again I salute
you and
your staff at DRAGON
magazine for your
efficiency.
Eirik Holbert
Plattekill, N.Y.
(Dragon #72)
