Runes and alphabets in Viking Ireland

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Runes and alphabets in Viking Ireland
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The first people who learnt to write used
pictures to represent words
These are Egyptian hieroglyphs as found painted
on the walls of the chambers inside the pyramids.
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Over time, people learnt to use letters which
each represented a sound.
The alphabet we use today was first developed by
the Etruscans in north Italy and then popularised
by the Romans. They brought their writing system
all over the known world when they created the
Roman Empire.
Etruscan letters
This is a Roman building brick, stamped with the
name of the Tenth Legion (The Romans used X 10)
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When the Romans brought their alphabet to new
lands, the letters often didnt represent sounds
in the new languages. People had to use
combinations of letters so they would represent
local sounds.

• Bean is the Irish word for woman. How do you
  pronounce the first letter? But sliabh is the
  Irish word for mountain and how do you
  pronounce the final two letters? Bh in Irish is
  a very different sound from B.
• Rzecz is the Polish word for thing. RZ should
  be pronounced as j in the French word bon jour
  and CZ should be pronounced as in English change.

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Instead of inventing combinations of letters, the
ancestors of the Vikings and the Irish both
developed alphabets of their own.The Viking
letters are called RUNES.
Spears from Denmark made around the years 200 AD
are inscribed with letters like this. This
alphabet is called the Elder Futhark and they are
the oldest type of RUNES.
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In Ireland, the alphabet the Irish developed is
called ogham
This alphabet was used on standing stones to
inscribe the names of the dead. The man buried
here was called Little Bald one, son of
Calf-Lord and he died around the time of St
Patrick.
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Both these alphabets the runes and the ogham
changed over time. Sometimes sounds dropped out
of the languages so the symbols to represent them
disappeared. Other times, new sounds were added
so new symbols were necessary.

• Runes also differed in various countries as the
  teachers and writers in each area worked out
  alphabets for themselves.
• If you want to look at the story of this in more
  detail, look up the website http//www.omniglot.
  com/writing/runic.htm

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Runes in Ireland

• We know what the runes used by Vikings in
  Ireland looked like because a man in Dublin
  carved the full alphabet on a piece of wood from
  an old barrel.

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Both runes and ogham letters were designed to be
carved with a knife rather than written with a
pen. This is why so few of the symbols have
curves in them.
One of these is the Viking runic alphabet from
Ireland and one is ogham which is which?
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The same sound in different alphabets

• Sometimes the same sound existed in both
  languages but the Vikings and the Irish each had
  their own letter. Say the word KICK aloud. Now
  say the word CAN. What sound do both these words
  begin with? The Irish represented this sound
  with a C while the Vikings represented it with a
  K. So the Irish would write a mans name as
  CORMAC and the Vikings would write the same name
  as KORMAK. Similarly, the Irish would write FIACC
  and the Vikings would write FIAK.
• Can you write your own name in ogham or in runes?
  If there are not enough letters in the alphabet
  the Vikings used in Ireland try writing it in
  the Elder Futhark like the Danes.

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The Viking learn the use of the dot from the Irish

• You may notice on old shop signs writing that
  looks like this. It is called the seanchló and it
  represents an Irish alphabet in which a dot is
  used where today wed use a h. This dot changes
  our pronounciation.
• What is the English version of
• this name?

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The dotted runes

• Over time the Vikings also began to use a dot
  and, like the Irish, they used it to represent
  sounds for which they did already not have runic
  symbols.

These new symbols were added to the Viking
alphabet around the year AD 1000, in the lifetime
of King Brian Boru.
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Thorgrims grave marker at Killaloe
The dead mans name was carved in runes as
þurkrim but there is a dot over the k which
changes the sound to a g. The first letter is
the special Viking letter thorn which does not
exist in our modern alphabet but which we
represent with the letters th. So this mans
name was THURGRIM. In the Ogham alphabet,
however, they spelt his name as TORQRIM. He
remains one of the very few early Viking settlers
in Ireland whom we know by name. It is
fascinating that his family decided to
commemorate him with a grave stone carved in both
the Viking and the Irish alphabets.
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Can you invent an alphabet of your own?

• When J.R. Tolkien was writing the Lord of the
  Rings he invented languages and alphabets for his
  various characters.
• Can you invent a language and an alphabet of
  your own?
• Decide what sounds your language has and then
  draw symbols to represent them.
• Act out a scene in class where you try and talk
  to people in your own secret language.