Starting from 1927, Sigurd Agrell developed speculations that were even more audacious. He argued that every letter represented a number, like in Hebrew Gematria, and that those numbers had magic attributes based on the names of the runes. He supported the Greek theory, but he also believed the creators of runic writing were Germanic soldiers who served the Roman Empire and were initiated into Mithras’ mysteries in the Rhineland. Since the rune *ūruz, u (u) means “aurochs, bull” (we know that bulls were central in Mithraism), he argued that the Fuþark was actually a “uþark,” because some runic wizards allegedly moved f (F) from the twenty-fourth and final spot to the first, in order to hide the key to their numeral mysticism from the uninitiated!121 That theory, which involved out-of-control mystical and numerological considerations, was popular in the early 1930s.122 However it is completely forsaken nowadays because there’s absolutely no reason to believe that the Fuþark was actually some “uþark,” and because we know that the oldest runic inscriptions came into being much before the time Mithraism spread to Germania. In spite of this, that theory was picked up in the 1970s by Heinz Klingenberg.123
Another ingenious but just as improbable explanation of the peculiar order of the letters of the Fuþark was brought up by Murray K. Dahm.124 Based on Polybius’s (2nd century BC) and Sextus Julius Africanus’s (beginning of the 3rd century) accounts, he reminds people that there were fortifications and towers on Roman borders that were used to send messages by lighting torches, sort of like semaphores. According to him, the Romans divided their alphabets into three eight-letter groups and brandished torches in coded directions and in a coded rhythm to send their messages. That hypothesis obviously involves a derivation of runic writing from Latin. But we don’t have much information on the exact nature of the signals and most importantly why would the inventors of runic writing have changed the order of the Latin alphabet for that rather marginal way?
The runes’ names were also studied etymologically and by examining their position within the Fuþark. Another question that was asked was whether the Fuþark came before or after every rune got a name, as it would let us know whether their names gave them their position within the “alphabet.” According to that hypothesis, which was also picked up by Helmut Arntz, the runes’ names not only refer to words, but also to symbols expressed by those words, and those symbols could be linked to an ancient solar cult that is characteristic of a people chiefly composed of farmers (maybe the Vanir in the Germanic religion, in opposition to the Æsir). Wolfgang Krause also believed that the runes’ names were linked to the the gods’ realm.125 That line of reasoning implies that the runes are not only used as phonemes, but also as symbols, giving us reason to believe that their use came prior to the creation of runic writing.
We shall retain this hypothesis because it is the only one that explains the peculiar order of the Fuþark and maybe even the distribution of runes into three ættir. The runes, used previously for religious, magical, oracular and divinatory purposes supposedly turned into a writing through contact with an alphabet from Mediterranean cultures whose letters were somewhat similar to them. But they should have conserved their original order and their division in three sequences that are eight runes long. Their names could be another proof of their use before they were used for writing. Therefore, runic writing would supposedly be the result of the fusion of an alphabetical writing with symbolic signs previously used.
Wolfgang Krause precisely offered to make the distinction between the Lautrunen and the Begriffsrunen, the runes used as sounds or phonemes and the runes used as symbols or concepts.126 As phonemes, runes derive from a North Italic alphabet, but as concepts, they derive from pre-runic symbols (vorrunische Sinnbilder) that date back to protohistory. “There was an extreme diversity of symbolic drawings wherever the Germanic language spread,” writes Krause, “and much before the birth of runes. Therefore we are justified to ask whether the association of genuine runic characters with symbolic drawings of the same kind could explain in some way the irreducible shapes of runic characters through some formal filiation.”127 Some of those “symbolic drawings” can incidentally be found right next to “alphabetical” runes in inscriptions such as the Kowel spearhead, or on the rocks of Kårstad, Norway (5th century), and the Himmelstadlund in Sweden.
The concept of the Begriffsrunen, that is to say conceptual or ideographic runes, is obviously controversial. Klaus Düwel says that the notion needs to handled carefully (Behutsamkeit).128
“Before the appearance of a coherent Fuþark, there supposedly was in the Germanic world several manifestations of the use of signs that are more or less similar to runes, with an obvious symbolic value,” reckons Lucien Musset, who nonetheless doesn’t give much credit to that hypothesis.129 While still remaining skeptical, he acknowledges that “nothing is in the way of seeing [in the runes] the legacy of some ‘pre-runic signs’ that were used all across the Germanic or Roman worlds as symbolic signs, recognition signs, oracular instruments, to certify property etc.”130
14
Symbols and “Pre-Writings”
Rupestrian Scandinavian engravings that mainly date to the second Nordic Bronze Age (1300–120 BC) and the transitory Iron Age period (800–600 BC) (hällristningar) were frequently used to try to identify graphic “pre-runic” signs. Those engravings, which were found in Tanum and Fossum in the Bohuslän province on the west coast of Sweden, as well as on the Bornholm Island, near Trondheim in southeastern Norway, are plentiful. 20,000 of them were found in Uppland, 24,000 in Västergötland, 15,000 in Östergötland and 12,000 in Södermanland.131 Franz Altheim and Elizabeth Trautmann are some of those who rely on them to explain the origins of the runes.132 But as seen earlier in this book, they also cite the engraved signs of the Val Camonica (Italy) that go back to the chalcolithic period and the beginning of the bronze age (1800–1500 BC). There again there’s plenty of material since we have found upwards of 130,000 different engravings on the rocks of the Val Camonica and on the rocks of the Vallée des merveilles, which is situated on both sides of the Mont Bégo, in the Alpes-Maritimes.133 Altheim and Trautmann believe that some of those signs are the sources of the runes that have no equivalent in Mediterranean alphabets.
But the rupestrian Scandinavian engravings as well as the engravings on the rocks of the Val Camonica are far from being the only ones that could be considered. In many cases, archaeological excavations brought to light signs and sequences of engraved signs not only in the territories of ancient Germanic (or Celtic) cultures, but also all over Europe. The oldest ones date back to the Upper Paleolithic.
Besides the engraved signs found in Glozel in 1924 that remain controversial, in spite of the suspicion that it was a plain and simple fake being now quelled,134 there are the rupestrian engravings of La Madeleine, of Gourdan, of Font-de-Gaume, of the Eyzies, of the Cave of the Trois-Frères (Ariège), of the Cave of Lortet, the signs on the Roche Bertier which go back to the Magdalenian (around 10,000 BC) and on a pebble of the Cave of Puy Ravel in the Bourbonnais, the two hundred colorful pebbles bearing graphic signs found in 1889 in Mas d’Azil (Ariège), the marks on the Cave of Altamira’s dome in Spain, the sequences of signs engraved on potteries that date back to the end of the bronze age that were found in Moras-en Valloire, the signs found in 1894 in the dolmenic chamber of Carrazedo, in the Alvão site (Portugal), that is supposedly about 8000 years old, etc.
All these signs that we obviously cannot decypher have been carefully accounted for. They are often referred to as “alphabetiforms” or “pre-writings,”135 meaning that they were not really writing systems, but their purpose was to convey something, and that they had a given signification for both the people who engraved them and the people who saw them. So, it seems like quite some pictographic and logographic signs have been used for symbolic representation or religious purposes since prehistory. The number of pre- and protohistoric signs that could have been used as inspiration for runes seems to be considerable, even if it is impossible to establish line
ages between them.
Incidentally, in some cases it may not be just symbolic communication, but rather fully-fledged writing, or at least the “precursory stage of writing” (Emilia Masson). Thanks to radiocarbon dating, we now know that a writing was already in use in the beginning of the Neolithic in the Vinca and Karanovo cultures, in the Danube valley near Belgrade. That writing, which predates by a large margin the Sumerian pictograms (that didn’t come into being before the end of the 4th millennium BC), was used from the end of the 6th millennium BC to around 3500 BC, meaning the arrival of Indo-Europeans in the region. M. A. Georgievsky started using it in 1940. Unlike ancient writing systems from the Orient (Egyptian hieroglyphs, Hittite and Luwian hieroglyphs, Sumerian cuneiform), it is a linear writing, which is apparently logographic (each sign conveys a concept) and non-phonographic (each sign conveys an individual sound or syllable). It only has 210 signs and some variations for thirty-six of them. The majority of the inscriptions found across thirty different sites are brief and present on ritual or votive objects. Unfortunately, they are hard to decipher as we know nothing about the spoken languages in the region before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans.136
Some other significant findings have been extracted from the Danube region and the Balkans. Some signs which look like letters laid out on four lines have been found in 1969 on the 6000– to 7000-year-old slab of clay of Gradesnica (western Bulgaria). The clay seal of Karanovo, found in 1968 near Stara Zagora, also in Bulgaria, dates back to around 3000 BC. The three tablets of Tartaria, found in 1963 by the Romanian prehistory specialist Ivan Vlassa near Turdas, Transylvania, also seem to bear primitive writing signs. We used to think for a long time that they were influenced by Sumerian writing, but now they are believed to be connected to the Cotofani culture. They supposedly date back to 4500 BC, and could therefore be anterior to the first civilizations of Mesopotamia.
15
The Debate On “Magic”
The opposition between magic and religion, which is a characteristic of Judeo-Christian monotheism, isn’t present in European paganism, and they were even said to have an “essential similarity.”137 “In most Indo-European civilizations,” writes François-Xavier Dillman, “magic definitely cannot be disassociated from all of the beliefs, representations, religious rites […] on the contrary, it is one of the most prevalent components, one of those that resists the most against Christianization.”138 The same author underlines that runic writing and Germanic magic are often “one and the same.”139 Patrick Moisson also emphasizes that there is a fine line between magic and religion, but he notes that whereas religion seeks to conciliate divinities with sacrifice and worship, magic “constrains divine powers with appropriate rites,” which assumes the existence of impersonal forces and “means to constrain the supernatural world.”140 Magic and religion are never brought into opposition like Good and Evil, or the authentic and the inauthentic, but rather are complementary aspects of holiness, which in Indo-European cultures are not brought into conflict.
The Old Norse term taufr(ar) first meant the wizardry or sorcery instruments, and then sorcery itself (see töfrar “seduction” in Icelandic). Seiðr is a specific kind of Norse magic which associates divination with sorcery (good or more often than not evil). It was mainly used in Scandinavia at the end of the Iron Age. Women seem to have been the only ones practicing its divinatory aspects. In Chapter 7 of the Ynglinga Saga which was written in 1230, Snorri Sturluson says that practicing seiðr is a shameful act for men (karlmenn). He also states in Chapter 4 that seiðr was first practiced by the Vanir divinities and then the Vanir goddess Freyja shared it to the Æsir gods, in particular Óðinn (hon kenndi fyrst með Ásum seið, sem Vönum var títt). In the Lokasenna, Loki reproaches Óðinn for practicing seiðr.
If the ancient Germanic peoples knew about the runes before they used them to write, such as when they used them for divination purposes for example, and if the runes kept some magical value as a figment of their previous use when they started using them for writing purposes, then the question surrounding “runic magic” obviously becomes essential. An immense amount of literature has been written on that topic, which fed a debate that was sometimes tumultuous.
Lucien Musset writes:
One of the most controversial and essential questions of the history of runology is to know whether runes are only a writing, like the Latin alphabet, or whether they are signs whose value is primarily magical, whose main use was to convey incantations. Almost all major runologists agree since the beginning of the 20th century that the latter is true.141
The “magic” standpoint is indeed supported by many authors like Sophus Bugge, Magnus Olsen, Carl J. S. Marstrander, Emanuel Linderholm,142 Hans Brix,143 Jan de Vries (who calls runic writing Zauberschrift), Wolfgang Krause and many others. But it has also garnered detractors.
Anders Bæksted is the author who is the most hostile to any “magic” interpretation. He wrote a consequential book144 in 1952 which impressed many specialists, including Lucien Musset (who said he was “converted”). In that book, which can be considered to be hypercritical, Bæksted actually mostly takes on extreme opinions, like Magnus Olsen’s who went as far as to claim that “the runes were not created for everyday life purposes, but rather to fulfill a supernatural mission,”145 and gematrian or numerological interpretations that thrived as early as the end of the 19th century before being systematized by authors like Sigurd Agrell. The critique of “runic numerology” was then expanded by Wolfgang Morgenroth.146 One can only side with him on that point.
Since then, the debate kept growing. Raymond I. Page calls the runologists who associate the runes with magic “inventive,” and he calls the runologists who still don’t want to hear anything about magic “skeptics.”147 Although he focuses his criticism on the Anglo-Saxon area, he puts himself into the “skeptic” category, along with Elmer H. Antonsen and Erik Moltke. Even if Antonsen acknowledges that it is “entirely possible” that one of the first purposes of the runes was magical, he still points out that until the 5th century, not one runic inscription that mentions a pagan divinity was found.148 It is true, but it is not as significant as he leads us to believe, because the issue at hand is not religion, but magic: although there is no mention of the gods in the oldest runic inscriptions, all kinds of curses, spells and conjurations can be found. Erik Moltke goes further and thinks it is foolish to see any magical characteristic in the runes. Enver A. Makaev is of the same mind.
On the contrary, Gerd Høst is one of those who think that taking into account magic is crucial to grasp the history of the runes. He reckons that “magic-writing (skriftmagien) is older than the fully-fledged writing system. Its roots must go as far back as the prehistory of writing, symbolic and religious magic, the pictorial world of rupestrian inscriptions and symbols of protection and destruction of all kinds.”149 Likewise, according to Ralph W. V. Elliott, “the runes were never solely utilitarian: since they were picked up by the Germanic people, they were used for divination and other rites. Throughout runic writing’s long history, interpersonal communication took a back seat to invoking higher powers in order to affect the lives and the fate of men.”150 Therefore Elliot thinks that the runes were first used for “magical” purposes before being used as a writing, and he thinks that as symbols, their origins are
the pre-runic pictures and the pictorial symbols engraved on the rocks and stones of ancient Germanic lands, lands where the runes were profoundly associated with the religious beliefs and ritual practices of the pagan and Germanic Antiquity.151
René L. M. Derolez writes in the same vein that
the runes have been manifestly used for religious and magical purposes for a long time. The signs used to hold a secret power that exceeded the literal meaning of the inscriptions.152
In that conversation which seems to never end,153 some runologists adopted a middle of the road perspective. While pointing out that “the obsession some runologists have with magic has more to do
with the psychology of scholars than with the inherent content of the inscriptions they study,”154 Lucien Musset underlines that the runes could very well have had magical uses as well as secular ones:
The runes are not magical, they only were sometimes used for magic […] As far as their magical inclination is real, it seems to have been reliant on the minority that knew how to trace and interpret them, it was not inherent to their nature.155
It’s quite obvious that the runes were first used for secular and magical/religious purposes, but that doesn’t tell us why there are so many “magical” texts among the first inscriptions, which can’t quite be explained by saying that “a minority knew how to trace and interpret them.” For that matter, Musset even notes that
it is because of their magical use, whether actual or assumed, that the last users of the Fuþark were sometimes struck with ecclesiastic excommunication since. It occurred since at least the end of the 16th century and predominantly in Iceland.”156
Likewise, when Alain Marez writes that “there is agreement that runic signs aren’t inherently magical, but that there were sometimes used for magical purposes,”157 he begs the question, because we could just as well argue that the signs lost their original magical property and that it was lost progressively as they became used for writing. But, of course, we need to distinguish between using the runes to trace a “magical” inscription and holding them to be inherently “magical” characters.
Even if Régis Boyer is very hostile to those “who are convinced of the religious or magical uses and nature or value of the writing of the ancient Germanic people,”158 he acknowledges that “the texts our knowledge of the North’s religion is derived from are literally drenched in magic […] It feels necessary to someone who wants to understand to assume at all times a backdrop made of a whole bunch of magical practices and words, conceptions related to sorcery,” which makes him suspect that the runes were originally used “mostly for magical words, and they were certainly associated with supernatural powers.”159
Runes and the Origins of Writing Page 5