Ancient Runes

The **Study of Ancient Runes** (commonly shortened to **Ancient Runes** and infrequently called **Runology**) is an elective course at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry that can be taken by students third year and above. Ancient Runes is the study of Ancient Scrips, languages, and translations.

## History

Runes are sets of linguistically related letters which make up a number of languages before the common adoption of the Latin alphabet in the muggle world and were commonplace in writing from times as early as 150 AD to as late as 1800 AD. Runes are believed to have been developed from the Old Italic Alphabets. The term "rune" comes from the Germanic root "*run-,"* meaning secret, or whisper.

The angular shape of runes is common among contemporary alphabets of the period, which were most often carved into wood, bone, and stone. The lack of horizontal strikings comes from the probability that such a strike would be with the grain of the wood, and would be more likely to split the surface in two. This trend, though common is not universal, and many early runic alphabets had varied, and sometimes horizontal, written strikes. Written runic manuscripts also frequently show horizontal strikes.

Although muggle scholars began introducing Latin elements in writings during the beginning to middle of the first millennium, magical folk in the British Isles did not adopt the Language until the end of the 10th century, during the spread of Roman Christianity into what is now Great Britain and Ireland.

## Languages

Seven periods are commonly recognized in the Study of Ancient Runes, though there are dozens of geographical variations upon each of the languages during each period. Many of these periods overlap, and in some places, more than one written language was used at once.

### **Period I**

Runic Inscription during "Period I" were generally in Ender Futhark, but the letters and shapes were not standardized at this point in time, causing a significant amount of variation. The alphabet underwent several changes until the first full futhark row was written out on the Kylver Stone in around 400 AD

### **Anglo-Saxon Runes**

Anglo-Saxon runes have an extended alphabet, containing 33 characters, 9 more than the 24 of the Elder Futhark. Developed in Ancient Frisia and spread to Englan, the futhorc was used from the 5th to 11th centuries.

### **Marcomannic Runes**

A runic alphabet consisting of a mixture of Elder Futhark with Anglo-Saxon futhorc, Marcomannic Runes were used primarily in the southern portion of the Carolingian Empire. Despite its name, the alphabet has no connection to the Marcomanni people.

### **Younger Futhark**

Also called Scandinavian Futhark, Younger Futhark is a reduced and abbreviated version of its ender counterpart, containing a mere 16 characters. These runes are found throughout Scandinavian settlements in Europe and abroad. In use from the 9th century to the 11th, Younger Futhark is also divided into long-branch and short-twig types. Long branch was most often used in official documentation, whereas short-twig was used primarily for personal use or official messages on wood, rather than stone.

### **Medieval Runes**

In the middle ages, Younger Futhark was once again expanded upon so that it contained one sign for each phoneme of the Old Norse Language. There was a large variety of rune forms, and some (such as *s, c,* and *z*) were used interchangeably. Medieval Runes were used well into the 15th century and were often used right alongside the Latin alphabet.

### **Dalecarlian Runes**

Dalecarlian runes came into use in the early 16th century and remained in some use up to the 20th century. It is unknown whether their use was an unbroken tradition throughout this period or whether people in the 19th and 20th centuries learned runes from books written on the subject. Dalecarlian Runes are a mix of runes and Latin and were used in the isolated province of Dalarna, Sweden.

## Magical and Divinatory usage

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## Ancient Runes (Hogwarts Class)

Classwork and homework involve plenty of practice translating runes, and the O.W.L. involves translating something written in runes into English. The N.E.W.T. similarly contains a translation as a part of its exam, but it is more complicated, and often contains several parts in different runic languages

### Required Texts and Readings

* *Advanced Rune Translation* by Yuri Blishen
* A *Runes Dictionary*
* *Magical Hieroglyphs and Logograms*
* *Spellman's Syllabary* by Rosana Amorim

### Ancient Runes Professors

* Bathsheda Babbling (1991-2008)
* Avery Sheridan (2009-Present)

## Trivia

* First edition copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard were written in an ancient runic language.
* Each of the members of the Elder Futhark chose their code names from the language they are named after. Each of their names is representative of their traits.