Hi RuneHelpers! One of the things we see quite frequently on the sub is that it is hard for a lot of people to determine which Younger Futhark conventions are appropriate for the Viking Age vs. which ones are more characteristic of the later period. Neither style is wrong, of course, but it's weird to mix-and-match writing conventions from different times.

There are also lots of points that have a habit of tripping people up, including:

• When to use ⟨ᛁ⟩ vs. ⟨ᛅ⟩ for the letter ⟨e⟩
• When to use ⟨ᚱ⟩ vs. ⟨ᛦ⟩
• When to use ⟨ᚬ⟩
• Which rune should be used for the letter ⟨ǫ⟩
• When it's ok to use doubled runes
• How short-branch runes fit into the picture

So to help out, we've created this new guide: A Comprehensive Guide to Writing Runes Like a Viking

This guide is designed to be useful for everyone from beginners to experienced RuneHelpers. It includes a cheat-sheet for which rune to use for every letter you may find in an Old Norse word, as well as easy explanations for why some of the weird rules exist. Feel free to share it with anyone wanting to write some Viking-Age text with Viking-Age runes.

You may have noticed that our rules were recently overhauled. But don't worry, the intent remains the same as it always was. The new rules and points mentioned below simply codify the way good-faith participants have been acting since this sub's inception.

But with that in mind, now is a good time to re-center ourselves around what really constitutes good rune help. This will hopefully be especially useful to some of our sub's newer participants. Welcome to you all, by the way!

R/RuneHelp doesn’t require participants to be credentialed academics and it doesn’t require answers to cite academic sources. However, we do require helpful answers that can stand up to a basic level of academic scrutiny. This means a little more has to go into a good answer than repetition of an idea we’ve read online somewhere, even if it was in this sub, unfortunately.

In the interest of garnering a good reputation for the sub, here are a few things to keep in mind when responding to posts:

We should be nice to people with "dumb" and/or common questions or misconceptions

This sub was created specifically as a safe place to ask the most basic, entry-level questions that other related subs are tired of hearing. We want to be a helpful, friendly place for people who are interested in runes to get started learning.

Downvoting a question asking for help with runes in a sub dedicated to rune help seems self-contradictory, and telling people their ideas are dumb will cause people to look elsewhere for answers where they will likely get bad information.

Obviously we as mods can't control your voting habits, but we do request that you try to avoid taking actions that would discourage brand new people from learning.

Modern does not equal wrong

Contemporary rune use is a matter of interest to scholars: it is notable that the lines of influence that lead to the use of runes today are discussed extensively by runologists who focus on contemporary mysticism and other ways in which the historic runic alphabets are used today. Discussions about modern practice are not off limits.

That said, this sub is not a religious advice forum. When discussing modern practices it is especially important to do so academically, from an etic perspective, and referring back to quality sources where appropriate.

There are no hard-and-fast rules and no rune police

Historically, runic writing exhibited several conventions and trends, but we have no reason to believe there were any ancient, officially-recognized linguistic institutions dictating and monitoring the application of widespread runic writing standards. No such thing exists in modern times either, and we are not here to become that.

Ultimately the purpose of writing is communication. If a message is successfully communicated then it is hard to justify the idea that it was done “wrong”. In fact many ancient inscriptions lack consistency or deviate from what we might expect based on conventions of their time and place.

No person in modern times has more right to runes than anybody else. If a person wants to write English with Younger Futhark, for instance, it may not be what you would do, but it's not objectively wrong. Feel free to recommend translating to Old Norse if you'd like, but we should avoid telling people they can't or shouldn't use runes in this way.

Lack of evidence is not evidence

It’s important to be careful, when describing ancient practices, that we do not over-declare how those practices did or did not work simply because we don’t have information pointing in one direction or another.

There is a big difference between saying “we have no evidence that runes worked this way” vs “runes did not work this way.” The former statement can be verified or falsified while the latter can not. We don’t want to assert things we don’t actually know.

Magic is a tricky subject (but yes, runes are magic)

Runes are not “just letters in an alphabet”. They are letters and they do work as an alphabet. But this is not all they are.

It is very clear that runes have been associated with the Germanic religious mindset ever since their conception. There are also numerous ancient attestations of runes being used for what we might call “magic”. These show up in the Norse mythological corpus, sagas, euhemeristic works, and even the archaeological record. However, there is very little information surviving from the pre-Christian period actually explaining any systems of rune magic.

It is correct to say that modern rune magic practices are generally not direct continuations of pre-Christian practices. However we should not say that runes aren’t magical or that the association between runes and magic is modern.

Additionally, drawing distinctions between what is ancient and what is modern is often quite helpful, especially since a lot of people accidentally subscribe to modern ideas only because they have been led to believe those ideas are ancient.

Runes did have meanings in the pre-Christian era

Anciently, individual runes were often used as stand-ins for their full names. For instance, the poem Hávamál as recorded in the Codex Regius manuscript uses a single ᛘ rune to indicate the full word maðr a total of forty-five times. It works because this is the rune’s name.

On the other hand, we don't have evidence for individual runes signifying concepts other than their direct names (such as love, energy, protection, etc). But please see above: lack of evidence is not evidence. There are several attestations of runes being used in ways we don’t understand, and all we can say definitively about those instances is that we don’t understand them.

We also do have evidence for runes being used to affect things like protection, but these are typically sequences of runes that appear within the context of larger magical formulae. For example, Sigtuna Amulet I includes a sequence of three íss runes (ᛁᛁᛁ) to help ward away a supernatural creature who is causing disease. This does not mean the íss rune stands for "protection" on its own, but it does mean that, for some reason, an ancient person believed that using three of them together could help represent protection and healing as part of a larger, formulaic, written charm.

Gibberish isn't always gibberish

The names of the runes, their order, and their grouping are all very likely deliberate and meaningful. If we were to see a photo of a kindergarten classroom in which the full Latin alphabet was posted up on one of the walls, we would not call this “gibberish.” We would understand the cultural context, meaning, and purpose of those letters being there. Ancient inscriptions containing a full rune row must also have had cultural context, meaning, and purpose, though we do not fully grasp these things in our time.

Even when an ancient inscription can be seen as gibberish in our eyes, we know that it was likely not gibberish to whoever made the inscription. There is almost certainly some hidden meaning there which might even be “magical”. If we don’t know, we simply can’t say.

Ancient runecasting and pulling runes

The Roman author Tacitus wrote about a Germanic practice in which several marks were carved onto bits of wood and then tossed upon a white garment for the purpose of divination. While it is quite possible and perhaps even likely that these marks were indeed runes, neither Tacitus nor any other ancient person ever explicitly tells us that these marks were the same as those used for writing, or provides details on how such practices should be interpreted.

For this reason, we can not, as etic observers, advise on what it means in a pre-Christian perspective if a person has cast or pulled any given rune, any sequence of runes, or the meaning of any backward or upside down rune. We have no documentation of such things. At the same time, we can not say definitively that pre-Christian people did not do something similar. They very well might have.

On that note, let's generally distance ourselves from subjective territory

In this context, I'm specifically talking about two things:

First, this sub doesn't take a stance on the value or merit of revivalist or reconstructionist practices. We also don't advise on them outside the context of academic study. As mentioned above, our main requirement is for helpful answers that can stand up to a very basic level of academic scrutiny. Advising on modern practices that are not direct continuations of ancient practices doesn't often fit that mold.

Secondly, a helpful, academic-style answer normally does not include opinions about how posters are using runes. There are some exceptions here, of course. For example, we do take a very strong stance against white-supremacist nonsense and encourage calling it out when you see it. But please see above: we should be nice. If someone asks for feedback on their transliteration for a tattoo, they are probably not looking for our opinions about whether their tattoo design is good or whether they should be getting a tattoo at all. That sort of thing is subjective and doesn't qualify as very good help.