Younger Futhark vs Anglo-Saxon Futhorc
Two branches of the same alphabet, developing at the same time, in opposite directions. Scandinavia cut its runes down to 16; England expanded to 29 and beyond.
The short answer
Both alphabets descend from the same 24-rune Elder Futhark, and both were changing over the same centuries. Their languages were also changing in comparable ways: inherited vowels splitting into new ones, consonants shifting. They arrived at opposite answers.
England added runes. When Old English sound changes split the inherited a-vowel three ways, English scribes invented ᚪ ac and ᚫ æsc to sit beside ᚩ os. When palatalisation gave ᚳ cen a /tʃ/ value and ᚷ gyfu a /j/ value, they added ᛣ calc and ᚸ gar for the hard sounds. The alphabet grew to fit the language.
Scandinavia removed runes. Faced with a language that was also acquiring new sounds, Younger Futhark carvers dropped eight characters and made the remainder carry more work. Why one branch expanded and the other contracted is one of the real open questions in runology.
Side by side
The complete rune rows. Click any rune for its dictionary entry.
Point by point
| Younger Futhark | Anglo-Saxon Futhorc | |
|---|---|---|
| Number of runes | 16 | 29, extended to 33 or more |
| In use | c. AD 800–1100 | c. AD 400–1100 |
| Region | Scandinavia and Viking settlements | England and Frisia |
| Language written | Old Norse | Old English and Old Frisian |
| Frisian share of the corpus | – | Between nine and thirty-one inscriptions depending on the edition: small, but the reason this alphabet is not simply "Anglo-Saxon" |
| Direction of change | Reduced from 24 | Expanded from 24 |
| Vowel runes | Three (ᚢ, ᛁ, ᛅ) plus the nasal ᚬ | Seven or more, including ᚪ, ᚫ, ᚣ, ᛠ |
| Separate d, p, g | None: all merged | All three present |
| Name evidence | Norwegian and Icelandic rune poems | The Old English Rune Poem, 29 stanzas |
| Best-known objects | Jelling stones, Rök stone, Bergen sticks | Franks Casket, Ruthwell Cross, Thames scramasax |
| Religious context | Spans the conversion; both pagan and Christian texts | Largely Christian, though the earliest English finds are not |
| Legacy in the Latin alphabet | None directly | þ (thorn) and ƿ (wynn) entered English spelling |
| Suitability for writing English | Poor: many English sounds have no distinct rune | Good: designed for an ancestor of English |
Common questions
- Are Anglo-Saxon runes the same as Viking runes?
- No. They are cousins, both descended from the Elder Futhark, but they were used by different peoples on opposite sides of the North Sea and they look and behave differently. Using futhorc runes for a Viking theme mixes up two traditions.
- Why is it a "futhorc" and not a "futhark"?
- Because the sound values of the first six runes changed. The inherited f-u-þ-a-r-k became f-u-þ-o-r-c in Old English as the a-vowel rounded to o and the k-rune took a c-name. The alphabet is named after its own first six letters, so the name changed with them.
- Which has better evidence for rune names?
- The futhorc, comfortably. The Old English Rune Poem gives 29 stanzas, one per rune, and is the most descriptive rune poem to survive. The Norse poems cover 16 runes in far terser verse.