Old Scandinavian Alphabet

In norse lore the god odin impaled his heart with his own spear and hung on the world tree yggdrasil.

Old scandinavian alphabet. The danish and norwegian alphabet called the dano norwegian alphabet is based upon the latin alphabet and has consisted of the following 29 letters since 1917 norwegian and 1948 danish. Runic alphabet origin little is known about the origins of the runic alphabet which is traditionally known as after the first six letters. In native swedish personal names ü and è and others are also used.

In old norse the word rune means letter text or inscription. Full tables of the elder futhark and younger futhark are available below this article. The word also means mystery or secret in old germanic languages and runes had a important role in ritual and magic.

Listen to a danish speaker recite the alphabet in danish the letters c q w x and z are not used in the spelling of indigenous words. Though not in the official alphabet á is a swedish old fashioned letter. For those of you looking to get into rune casting or reading runes its good to study these before you begin as runes are exceptionally powerful and without a full understanding could potentially bring you to the edge of a fire you won t put out easily.

The old norse alphabet consisted of the following lettersː a b c d ð e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z þ æ ǫ ø œ this is based on the more modern standardized spelling as older texts in most every language lacked unified spelling standards meaning the same word could appear in several different ways within the same text. Below is a table that has each of the norse runes on it and both the germanic and english names as well as a description of each one. This article is brought to you by sons of vikings an online store with hundreds of viking related items including jewelry drinking horns shirts home decor and more.

Younger futhark was a runic script used to write old norse and was the main alphabet in norway sweden and denmark throughout the viking age but was largely though not completely replaced by the latin alphabet by about 1200 as a result of the conversion of most of scandinavia to christianity. But you must learn to recognize the most common genealogical scripts and prints. In modern times scholars established a standardized spelling for the language.

The runic alphabet may have been based on an early version of the greek alphabet. You don t need to read german fluently to be able to decipher most genealogical records. A number of letters resemble those used in early greek alphabet.