A Brief History of the Elder Futhark

The Elder Futhark is the oldest known version of the Runic Alphabet and was used in the parts of Europe which were home to Germanic peoples, including Scandinavia. Rune-like symbols appear as cave markings as early as the late Bronze Age circa 1300 BC, but the first Runic inscriptions that have survived to the modern day dated from around 200 CE, about the same time the Runemal, or art of runic interpretation was wide-spread in Northern Europe. The rune carvings discovered spread across Europe illustrate that the runic forms were well established and had been in use for some centuries before the time the earliest written inscriptions were found. Likewise the meaningful names and symbols attached to each rune confirms they held magical and religious significance long before they emerged as a writing system for records and messages.

Proto-Germanic Linguistics and language history suggest the time of Futhark's creation to the 1st millennium BCE, about the same time that wand use became more widespread amongst wizardkind. The resemblance to Mediterranean scripts suggests the Futhark may have been adapted from the Greek or Etruscan alphabets, or that it originated from the same Semitic language sources that influenced the development Greek and Etruscan alphabet. The earliest Futhark inscriptions don't have a fixed writing direction, but instead can be written either left-to-right or right-to-left, which was a feature of very archaic Greek or Etruscan alphabets before the 3rd century BCE. If the Futhark and the Greek and Etruscan alphabets came from the same origins, it is possible that the Futhark was developed as far back in history as 2000 BC.

Most Runic texts are found on hard surfaces such as rock, wood, and metal. This is the reason Runes are made up of straight lines, as it is much easier to carve a line than it is to carve a curve, especially in wood where the direction of the grain must be taken into account. The Elder Futhark runes do not contain any horizontal or curved lines. The vertical and diagonal lines used to make up the rune symbols are easier to cut across the grain in wood and if you attempt to cut a line horizontally along the grain, the cut will close up as the rune dries and the line will disappear. The less sophisticated tools available at the time the Elder Futhark was first established are yet another reason simple lines were used for runic forms.

The Elder Futhark was used mostly before the 9th century CE. After this time it was adapted into other Futhark forms as languages changed and more Germanic groups adopted it for their own needs. The runes changed to fit the language shifts but the Elder Futhark form remained the common ancestor. An early offshoot of Futhark was employed by Goths, and so it is known as Gothic Runes. It was used until 500 CE when it was replaced by the Greek-based Gothic alphabet. The Anglo-Saxons brought Futhark from continental Europe in the 5th century CE and modified it into the 33-letter Futhorc to accommodate sound changes that were occurring in Old English. In Scandinavia, Futhark also evolved around the 9th century CE. Instead of 24 letters, the Scandinavian Younger Futhark had 16 letters. Nine of the original Elder Futhark letters were dropped and a new one was created. There were two major varieties of Younger Futhark, Danish and Swedish-Norwegian.

The Futhark started to decline with the spread of the Latin alphabet. In England, Anglo-Saxon Futhorc started to be replaced by the Latin alphabet by the 9th century CE, and did not survive much more past the Norman Conquest of 1066. Futhark continued to be used in Scandinavia for centuries longer, but by 1600 CE, it had become nothing more than a curiosity, and by the time the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy was established in 1692, the magical elements of the runes were almost completely forgotten by Mugglekind and fell out of favour with many Witches and Wizards, who preferred to use their wands for all magic and spellwork.