Portal:Ancient Germanic culture/Selected article/1

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The Runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using letters (known as runes) formerly used to write Germanic languages before and shortly after the Christianization of Scandinavia and the British Isles. The Scandinavian variants are also known as Futhark (or fuþark, derived from their first six letters: F, U, Þ, A, R, and K); the Anglo-Saxon variant as Futhorc (due to sound changes undergone in Old English by the same six letters). However, the first A in the fuþark was nasal, hence originally close to an o.

The earliest runic inscriptions date from c. 150, and the alphabet was generally replaced by the Latin alphabet with Christianization by c. 700 in central Europe and by c. 1100 in Scandinavia. However, the use of runes persisted for specialized purposes in Scandinavia, longest in rural Sweden until the early 20th century (used mainly for decoration as runes in Dalarna and on Runic calendars). The three best-known runic alphabets are:

• The Elder Futhark (c. 150–800)
• The Anglo-Saxon Futhorc (400–1100)
• The Younger Futhark (800–1100)