The oldest futhark we have: a stone slab in a Gotland grave with the whole row cut in order
Futhark is the name of the rune row, taken from the sounds of its first six runes: f, u, th, a, r, k. The fullest early copy of that row we have is cut on a limestone slab that was laid face down in a grave at Kylver, in Stånga parish on the Swedish island of Gotland, around 400 AD. Twenty-four runes, in order, in one line, with six more runes after them that nobody has explained.
That slab is the reason the order on every rune chart looks the way it does. Here is the find told whole: the grave, the stone, the row, the odd line at the end, the second object that backs it up, and the parts scholars still argue over.
A slab laid face down in a grave at Kylver
In 1903 a grave field at the Kylver farm, in Stånga parish on Gotland, was excavated. One of the graves was a cist, a box built of flat limestone slabs. One of those slabs carried an inscription, and the carved face was turned inward, toward the dead.
Nobody can say whether the stone was cut for that grave or cut earlier and reused as building material. Both happen in the record. The slab is now in the Swedish History Museum's collection in Stockholm, and it is usually dated to about 400 AD.
It is worth being plain about what that means. One object survived because it was buried. Like the sealed jar found under a house, it tells us a little, clearly, and leaves the rest open.
Twenty-four runes in order, and six more nobody can read
On the slab the row runs as a single line. Written out in the three groups of eight that other objects use, it is this:
ᚠ ᚢ ᚦ ᚨ ᚱ ᚲ ᚷ ᚹ (f u þ a r k g w)
ᚺ ᚾ ᛁ ᛃ ᛇ ᛈ ᛉ ᛊ (h n i j ï p z s)
ᛏ ᛒ ᛖ ᛗ ᛚ ᛜ ᛞ ᛟ (t b e m l ŋ d o)
After the row comes a mark shaped like a fir tree, and then six runes reading s u e u s, which is the same read forward or backward. There is no agreed reading of either. Some scholars have taken the sequence as a formula, some as a carver filling the space, some as practice. The stone does not say.
Scholars also differ on the row itself. A full futhark cut on an object that goes into a grave may have been meant to do something, or it may be an alphabet written out because the carver knew it. We give you both readings because the evidence gives both.
A stamped gold disc from Vadstena
A single object is a single object. The row is confirmed by others, and the clearest is a small gold bracteate, a stamped disc worn as a pendant, found at Vadstena in Östergötland, Sweden, in 1774. It is dated to the 500s, and it carries the futhark again, this time divided into three groups of eight by marks between them.
That grouping is how the row is still taught. Later medieval Scandinavian rune writing also works in groups of eight. Another bracteate, from Grumpan in Västergötland, carries the same arrangement.
The Vadstena disc itself was stolen from the museum in Stockholm in 1938 and has not been recovered. What it recorded survives in casts, drawings and photographs, which is how most people have read it since.
The two objects are about a century apart and a long way apart, and the order matches almost exactly. Scholars note that the last pair of runes does not stand in the same order on every object. That small difference is part of the record too.
How old the runes really are
A comb from the Vimose bog
A bone comb from Vimose in Denmark carries a single word, harja. It is among the oldest runic objects known, and it shows the script already in ordinary use more than two centuries before Kylver.
A spearhead from Øvre Stabu
A Norwegian spearhead carries the word raunijaz, read as a name for the weapon. Runes are a working script for marking objects long before anyone writes out the whole row.
The Kylver slab
The full twenty-four runes, in order, on a limestone slab laid face down in a grave on Gotland. The oldest complete futhark we have.
The Vadstena bracteate
The same row on a stamped gold disc in Östergötland, this time split into three groups of eight.
The row shortens
In Scandinavia the twenty-four runes give way to a row of sixteen, the Younger Futhark, with several sounds sharing one rune. The older row drops out of use.
The names reach print
George Hickes prints the Old English Rune Poem in 1705; the manuscript it came from was lost in the Cotton library fire of 1731. Bruce Dickins prints the Old English, Norwegian and Icelandic rune poems together in Runic and Heroic Poems of the Old Teutonic Peoples, 1915.
What the Kylver slab proves, and what it does not
What it shows is narrow and solid. By about 400 AD the twenty-four runes stood in a fixed order, known well enough to be cut out from memory on an island in the Baltic. A century later the same order turns up again, stamped on gold, hundreds of miles away. The order is old, checkable and shared.
What it does not show is why that order. It is not the order of the Latin or Greek alphabet, and where the script came from is still argued: the North Italic alphabets of the Alpine region and Latin are both put forward. Michael Barnes, Runes: A Handbook, 2012, and R. I. Page, Runes, 1987, set out the arguments without settling them.
It also tells us nothing about the runes' names or meanings. Not one of the names is written down anywhere near this date. And nothing in the runic record of this period shows runes used to tell the future. The Roman writer Tacitus, in Germania chapter 10, written about 98 AD (translated by Church and Brodribb, 1868), describes marks cut on strips of wood and cast on a white cloth. He does not call them runes, and nobody can check what he saw.
Why the futhark order matters when you write runes today
The order is the oldest part of the whole system, and the only part with an object behind it. The names and the meanings come from poems written down roughly a thousand years after the Kylver slab was cut. The Old English Rune Poem opens its first stanza "Feoh byþ frofur fira gehwylcum", wealth is a comfort to everyone, which is where the wealth gloss on the f rune comes from. That is a later source, and worth knowing as one.
Three things follow for anyone writing runes now.
- Runes write sounds, not English letters. The older row has no separate runes for c, q, v, x or y. You spell by ear.
- The groups of eight are old. Learning the row in three rows of eight is how the Vadstena disc already presents it.
- What came later is later. Reading three runes for an answer, a rune a day, a blank rune: all modern practice, and good to label as yours rather than as old.
For what each rune says in the poems and how it is used now, side by side, see our rune meanings post on the 24 Elder Futhark runes, and the one on Algiz and the other protection runes. If you want that layered out rune by rune on paper, with the sigil and alphabet work beside it, that is what Runes, Sigils & Magical Alphabets is built to be.
Copy the row into your own pages, by sound
Twenty minutes at a table, with whatever notebook you already keep.
- Rule three lines across a page, eight spaces each.
- Write the transliteration first, lightly: f u þ a r k g w, then h n i j ï p z s, then t b e m l ŋ d o.
- Draw each rune above its letter, one at a time, saying the sound out loud as you go. Sound, not letter name.
- Under the three rows, write where the order comes from: Kylver, Gotland, about 400 AD, face down in a grave. Add the second line: names from the rune poems, printed by Dickins in 1915.
- Leave the facing page empty. That is where your own notes go, marked as yours.
Writing it out by hand is how the row sticks, and it gives your book a first page that came from an object rather than a chart you found somewhere. Keep a pocket reference beside the page if you like reading runes you have drawn; The Rune Companion gives one rune per spread for exactly that.
Next, from the old sources
Rune meanings: the 24 Elder Futhark runes, from the sources and in practice
What each of the 24 Elder Futhark runes means: what the Old English, Norwegian and Icelandic rune poems say, and what is modern practice.
Protection runes: what the old rune poems say about Algiz and three others
What the Old English Rune Poem really says about Algiz, Thorn, Tir and the yew rune, which readings are modern, and how to mark a door quietly.
The Witch Bottle: The Jar Sealed Under a House, What Was in It, and a Safe Version Today
The sealed witch bottle found at Greenwich, what the writers of 1671 and 1681 put in theirs, and a house jar for today with no urine and nothing heated.
