Elder Futhark
Also called runic alphabet, futhark
Roughly the second to the eighth century
Norse symbolsElder Futhark meaning
The Elder Futhark is a 24-character runic alphabet used in early inscriptions, mostly names and short memorials. It is named after its first six letters: f, u, th, a, r, k. Modern charts that assign each rune a spiritual slogan lean on much later esoteric systems, not on those inscriptions.
An alphabet for a language. Not a pack of personality runes.
Where it comes from
Runes in this older row appear on metal and stone from about the second century into the eighth, across Germanic-speaking Europe. The texts are short. Rune poems that gloss letter-names belong to later alphabets, especially the Anglo-Saxon and the younger Scandinavian rows. Guido von List and other twentieth-century occultists published systems of rune “meanings” that tattoo charts still copy. Some runes, notably forms close to Sowilo and Othala, were used by the SS. That use is a twentieth-century occupation of letter-shapes. It does not make the alphabet a Nazi script, and it does mean a few letters cannot be worn naively.
Norse
Letters before slogans
A rune is a character. The name of the character sometimes has a word behind it, which is how alphabets work. An inscription that says a name is doing the thing the alphabet was for. A chart that says “protection” for a character is doing a different century’s thing.
Modern
List is not the Eddas
If a book of rune meanings cannot tell the Elder Futhark from the Younger, and cannot mention List, it is not a guide to the inscriptions. The vegvísir is the same problem in a single picture: a later magic diagram sold as Viking. The alphabet, at least, is actually old. The slogans mostly are not.
A hard history
Particular runes were taken up by Nazi insignia. A memorial inscription and an SS collar tab are not the same object. Context decides, as it does for the svastika in this cabinet.
Near this
Sources
- Elder Futhark inscriptions, roughly second–eighth centuries
- Later rune poems belong to other rows
- Guido von List and twentieth-century esoteric rune systems
Named when the entry depends on a text, a date, or a standard. Catalog numbers are not invented.
Your margin
Private. It stays in this browser and never joins the canon.
symbol.wiki, edited as Sigilla. Last reviewed 2 October 2026. A reading of public tradition, not a ruling.