Elder to Younger Futhark: When the Runes Changed

The more famous Elder Futhark runes went out of use in Scandinavia around AD 700, replaced by the less efficient Younger Futhark. This video takes a look at some of the inscriptions just before and just after this replacement, considering how and when one alphabet was displaced by the other.

Logos by Elizabeth Porter (snowbringer at gmail).

[demcrusher]

The good Doctor might not look it, but he is definitely an AMON AMARTH fan!!

[Kristian-liuk]

As always, potentially boring stuff is presented so interesting and well explained from this guy. I wish all ancient languages could have a genious like this to give us similar insight.

[midtskogen]

Since the language changed so much, it also became difficult for people to understand the old text, both the meaning and the runes themselves. The mapping between runes and vowels, which had changed, became unclear and didn't make sense anymore. So rather than to try to use runes that they didn't understand, they came up with something simpler. And the reinvention happened to be poorer.

[Tina]

“ I wish you good thinking.”

Just on the face of it, with limited information, the Younger Futhark seems to me to be a “texting” version of the Elder Futhark.

[susannabroome]

I am thinking about the catastrophes around the year 540, with volcano eruptions and plague. Could they have been the cause of the change in language?

[paulaunger]

This makes me think of Braille. About 12 years ago, a new version of Braille (type II) was produced. A lot of people hated it because it contained fewer characters and, they felt, limited expression - compared with type I Braille it was like ‘text-speke’ - abbreviated. So I wonder if that might be behind Younger Futhark - a desire to make it easier, possibly to widen the number of people using it.

[jonwhite]

Thank you for creating this video, been looking forward to this for a while now :)

[elfarlaur]

It makes me think of how in old English they used "a" for the sound in "father" but "æ" for the sound in "cat." And yet today we see it as obvious that "a" can do both of these sounds. That's how I imagine the writer of the rok stone looking back at elder futhark is thinking.

[jesseholcombe]

This was absolutely fascinating. Thank you!

[Runic-Raven]

im still convinced that a lot of people back then just wrote as they THOUGHT it was right.

[ethanwraby]

Great video as usual, looking forward to many more!

[hschan]

Interesting point. 450AD to 650AD was during the migration period. It's not hard to imagine the proficient elder futhark users migrating in droves to former Roman lands seeking better fortunes after the collapse of the empire during this period. Indeed we know for a fact large numbers of Jutlanders migrated to what would later become England, along with Angles, Saxons and Frisians in this era, and it was said that Northumberia and Bernacia had lots of Norwegian settlers even before the Viking age.

[letthetunesflow]

Such a fascinating historical event that I really hope has more discoveries helping to answer our questions, and that we find more evidence for determining what actually happened, and why! Thanks for sharing this!

[kevinhansson]

Really good video! support from Sweden!

[ivintardoni]

This has helped explain a lot of questions I had on the futhark changes

[jishcatg]

What was the literacy rate? How many people actually could read runes at that time? It seems that rapid changes are easier when it's a very small percentage of people that are changing, unlike modern writing systems where there is resistance from almost the whole population due to nearly full literacy.

[RadicalCaveman]

I have a feeling that the line of transmission of the Elder Futhark died out for whatever reason and people with an imperfect second-hand knowledge of it had to scramble to create a new system out of what they knew.

[Vidlaste]

That thing about the old Irish written language changing in a similar way as proto norse is indeed very interesting. There is genetic evidence of contact between the british isles and western Norway that dates as far back as hundreds of years before the 800s. So there's the possibility that the languages may have affected eachother even that far back in time.

[demopem]

One hypothesis I have seen is that it was a deliberate reform. Someone, or a group of poeple, in the Denmark-Southern Sweden area decided that adding more runes wasn't the way to go (like they did in England and Frisia, ending up with 30-35 runes), and instead went for a radical simplification. Don't underestimate peoples insights into how language and writing worked at the time, just because they didn't have internet. ;) Of course, there's no way to prove that this is actually what happened... so we will probably never know for sure. :/

[trungkiennguyen]

I like to imagine how they view the whole “same symbol for different sounds” the same way English speaking ppl view “th” representing both sounds. Sure they’re different sounds but because we learnt of them with the same symbol for too long, it never quite occured to us (unless you are too into linguistics lmao). One thing i definitely believe is that the supposed “logic” of a writing system is only good for the learning stage, whereas the more we use them in our everyday life, we just remember certain “shape” of a word and doesn’t care abt spelling all that much, which is why writing system that seems weird and illogical still works most of the time