Anglo-Saxon Futhorc

The English development runs opposite to the Scandinavian one. Where the northern row was cut to sixteen signs, this one was extended, because sound changes in Old English and Old Frisian split vowels that the older row had covered with a single character. New runes were added to write them, the values of some inherited characters shifted, and the name of the row itself changed with the first six sounds, which is why it is a futhorc rather than a futhark. The expansion did not stop at one point.

Manuscript lists from Northumbria give rows longer than anything found on an object, running to more than thirty characters, some of which look like scholarly elaboration rather than working script. Distinguishing the runes people actually cut from the runes antiquarian scribes recorded is a live problem in the field. One well known object carries the entire row rather than a message: a single edged iron knife recovered from the Thames, inlaid with the full sequence of characters in order and with a personal name after them, presumably that of the maker or owner. Objects of that kind are among the best evidence for what the standard order and inventory were understood to be at a given time and place, as opposed to what any individual inscription happens to use, and they are the closest thing the tradition has to a published alphabet chart.

In England the script is found most prominently on Christian stone monuments. A tall Northumbrian cross carries, in runes running along its sides, verses closely related to a surviving Old English poem in which the cross itself speaks about the crucifixion. Another cross of the same region carries a runic memorial inscription. The script was not felt to be pagan, and there is no sign that its use had to be defended. The best known object is a small whalebone box carved with scenes that mix a Germanic smith's legend, the twins suckled by a wolf, the Magi bringing gifts and the sack of Jerusalem, with runic captions in Old English and one panel in Latin written in runes. Whoever made it moved between those worlds without apparent difficulty.

Runes also entered manuscript culture. Scribes used individual runes as abbreviations for the words that were their names, riddles in a poetic collection turn on runic letters, and one poet wove the runes spelling his name into the closing passages of his poems so that they could be read as a signature. That is a literate, learned use of the script, quite different from cutting a name on a brooch, and it continued until the Latin alphabet displaced the practice after the Norman Conquest.