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Other Rune Sets

© Dan Gronitz

For the previous articles we have mainly focused on the elder futhark rune. All of the examples and images were from that set and now I’d like to take the time to talk briefly about the various other rune sets. This article will not cover these sets in full, but will act as a short introduction to the other sets so that you can become somewhat familiar with the other sets available to you. From there, in later articles, we will go more in depth on each set. Are you ready? Are you anxious? Well then here we go.

The Younger Futhark
The younger futhark is sometimes referred to as the younger futhork because of the order of the first 6 rune staves. The elder futhark goes with the order of Fehu (f) – Uruz (u) – Thurisaz (th) – Ansuz (a) – Raidho (r) – Kenaz (k) where as the younger futhark moves the “a” sounding rune towards the middle of the rune row. In it’s place the younger futhark rune Oss is placed so we have the order of Fe (f) – Ur (u) – Thurs (th) – Oss (o) – Raeidh (r) – Kaun (k) to give us a futhork instead of a futhark.

The younger futhark also consists of fewer runes than the elder futhark. There are only 16 runes in the set as opposed to the 24 runes of the elder futhark. This took place sometime in the 7th or 8th century when most other newly forming rune sets were expanding their sets to more than 25 runes.

Gothic Runes
The Gothic runes aren’t that much different than the elder futhark set. In fact the Gothic runes only add one new rune, Quairtra, to make it a set of 25 runes. The set was said to have been created around the middle of the 4th century but Bishop Ulfila and were used for religious dedications. Not much is known about the meanings of these runes due to the fact that unlike many of the other sets there is no Gothic Rune Poem.

Anglo-Saxon and Frisian Runes
Often you will see these two sets closely linked and this is due to the fact that the Frisian rune set is the same as the Anglo-Saxon rune set plus one more rune. The Anglo-Saxon runes, however, are simply an expansion of the elder futhark runes. The Anglo-Saxon set consists of the 24 runes of the elder futhark plus 4 new runes, making it a set of 28 runes. The reason for the expansion on the elder futhark runes to make new sets is due to the movement of the runes across Europe. As the sets became more popular and used more by different groups of people it was necessary to expand the sets to add different phonetic sounds to adapt to the language of the people using the set.

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