Ring with Runes, Silver

Ring with Runes, solid Silver

Our ring with runic inscription is decorated with the 16 Runes of the 11th century, the late viking period. The Runes are arranged in the order of the futhark, forming no sentence but the magical alphabet. Only a small part of the population was able to write and read, so the runes were divine and had a magical meaning. This inscription was found on a bone carving from Uppland, Sweden.

Ring with Runes, Silver

The earliest inscriptions in germanic letters, the "Runes", date in the 2nd century AD. One of the oldest inscriptions is found on an extraordinary large brooch in a burial of a germanic woman in Himlingöje, Danmark. The runic letters were used on several materials: chiseled in stones, stamped or carved in wood or bones, ingraved or minted on metals. In a period of nearly thousand years they gave an impression of the development of the germanic languages. The runic alphabet (Futhark) bases on the 24 letters of the elder futhark, which are the most popular runes today. The elder Futhark was in use until the germanic migration period. With the spreading of the germanic peoples several different Futharks with different runes were developed. At the age of the vikings, the alphabet was reduced to 16 Runes of different spelling.

The Runes were first used for cultic inscriptions of names (maybe to show ones posession) and magical spells. Thiefes were cursed and weapons were made stronger by the help of the gods. In the germanic mythology, the runes were given to the humans by Odin, the chief god and ruler of Asgard. He hung on the world tree Yggdrasil for 9 days and nights, hurt by his own spear. After all this pain he received the magical runes, who made the spoken word repeatable for eternal time. A real wonder for the ancient people! This divine origin explains the connection between the runes and the magical use. Each rune had a name, representing the sound of it´s pronunciation. Most names are reconstructable by the rune poems of the 8th century and by comparison  with the Gothic alphabet. The meaning is created by the translation of the rune´s name.

While the latin language and letters became popular, particulary in monastaries and for the nobility, the runes were finally replaced in the early 13th century. In the tradition of the people the runes were still alive until the late middle ages, in skandinavia the old letters were used side by side to the latin ones.