- Staveless runes
Staveless runes were the climax of the simplification process in the evolution of
runic alphabet s that had started when theElder Futhark was superseded by theYounger Futhark .Enoksen 1998:75] In order to create the staveless runes, vertical marks (or staves) were dropped from individual letters (or runes). The name "staveless" is not entirely accurate, since the i rune consists of a whole stave and the f, þ, k and the s runes consist of shortened main staves.Since their rediscovery on
runestone s atHälsingland in the 17th century, staveless runes have also been known as the Hälsinge runes. This label is, however, misleading since staveless runes also appear inMedelpad ,Södermanland , and the Norwegian town ofBergen .hape
The runes may look hard to recognize, but in fact it is only the main staves that are generally missing, and if a main stave is added it is apparent that the a, n, t, l and s runes are identical to those in the
Younger Futhark .Enoksen 1998:76] It should be noted that no ã rune has been found in the inscriptions, but since the staveless runes indicate pairings, it has been postulated that it was a mirrored form of the b rune.Enoksen 1998:77]cholarship
Enoksen notes that it appears from the title page of
Johannes Bureus ' runic primer that Bureus had some understanding of the staveless runes in 1611, but that this has been denied by virtually all runologists.Enoksen 1998:183] Since Bureus had not succeeded in deciphering the runes, a large poster with the image of two runestones with staveless runes was published in 1624 together with the announcement of a royal reward for the one who could decipher them.Enoksen 1998:194] It would, however, take half a century before someone found the solution.At the end of the 1660s,
Athanasius Kircher , who was the world's foremost interpreter ofhieroglyphs , studied the runes, but he arrived at the conclusion that the staveless runes were nothing but meaningless scribbles and that the stones had been erected in order to protect against snakes.The verdict of the hieroglyph expert was too much for the mathematician, antiquarian and Hälsingland native
Magnus Celsius . Celsius departed for Hälsingland in the early 1670s and made meticulous drawings of the runestones. When he was back in Stockholm, he worked hard on deciphering the runes but had to give up. Eventually he tried to add staves to the runes and suddenly deciphered some of the staveless runes. By 1674, he had deciphered all the runes except for the R rune, which he interpreted as a distinguishing mark.The following year, Celsius made a speech at
Uppsala University , where he made his discovery public. He started the process of publishing his discovery shortly after making the speech but died suddenly before the printing was finished. However, the news of the discovery spread quickly among scholars and it was used as the basis of the claim thatstenography had originated in Sweden.Enoksen 1998:195] It would beOlof Celsius who finally published his father's discovery.Examples
The following runestones are some of those that feature staveless runes:
*Österberga stone
*Skarpåker stone
*Sö 137 at Aspa bro
*Spånga stoneNotes
References
*Enoksen, Lars Magnar (1998). "Runor : historia, tydning, tolkning". Historiska Media, Falun. ISBN 91-88930-32-7
ee also
*
Bind rune
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.