Occult lore
Elder Futhark
Direct answer
Elder Futhark: The Elder Futhark is the oldest form of the runic alphabet, a row of twenty-four signs used by Germanic peoples from about the second century to the eighth.
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At a glance
- Also called
- older futhark, germanic futhark, 24 runes
- Found in
- Spells & Occult Terms
- Related
- Runes, Bindrune, Divination
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What is the Elder Futhark?
It has twenty-four runes and takes its name from the sounds of the first six: f, u, th, a, r and k. Inscriptions in it are found on weapons, jewellery, combs and standing stones from Scandinavia to central Europe, and most are very short: a name, a maker's mark, a memorial.
Later tradition divides the row into three groups of eight, called aettir. Each rune had a name that was a common word, known from poems written down centuries afterwards, and modern rune readers build their meanings on those names. The sounds of the runes are secure; the names given for the oldest row are reconstructions.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Tarot, runes, I Ching.
What sets Elder Futhark apart
The Elder Futhark is known as a fixed order as well as a set of signs: the Kylver stone lists the row from f to the end, and later sources divide it into three families of eight. Its shapes are built of straight strokes, upright or slanting, which suits cutting across the grain of wood. The sound of each rune is secure. The names usually printed beside them, Fehu, Uruz and the rest, are scholars' reconstructions from the later rune poems, and textbooks mark them with an asterisk.
- Size: twenty-four runes in three groups of eight, the aettir
- Name: from the first six sounds of the row: f, u, th, a, r, k
- In use: about 150 to 800 CE, across the Germanic-speaking lands
- First full row: the Kylver stone, Gotland, about 400 CE
- Replaced by: the sixteen-rune Younger Futhark in Scandinavia, around 800
Often mistaken for something else: The Younger Futhark is the Viking Age row of sixteen runes; the Elder Futhark is its twenty-four-rune ancestor, largely out of use by the time the Viking Age began.
The story behind Elder Futhark
The oldest inscriptions date from about 150 CE. The earliest surviving list of the full row in order is on the Kylver stone from Gotland, cut about 400 CE. By about 800 the Elder Futhark had given way in Scandinavia to the Younger Futhark of sixteen runes, and in England to an enlarged row of up to thirty-three. Scholars learned to read the older runes again in the nineteenth century.
Why Elder Futhark matters
Almost every modern rune set is the Elder Futhark, so knowing its age and its limits shows which meanings are old and which were added in the last century.
How to read Elder Futhark
Rune readers draw from its twenty-four signs and read each by its name; historians date an inscription partly by which row it is written in.
Elder Futhark in practice: an example
A reader who draws Fehu, the first rune, is working with a sign of the Elder Futhark whose name means cattle, and so wealth.
Where readings of Elder Futhark go wrong
The divinatory meanings sold with rune sets are modern. No source from the time of the Elder Futhark explains how, or whether, it was used to divine.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
Recorded here as history and lore. No rite is taught on this page.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Spells & Occult Terms
- Aliases
- elder futhark runes, older futhark, elder futhark alphabet, germanic futhark, 24 runes
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What is the Elder Futhark?
It is the oldest runic alphabet: twenty-four signs used by Germanic peoples from about 150 to 800 CE. The name comes from its first six sounds, f, u, th, a, r and k.
How many runes are in the Elder Futhark?
Twenty-four, traditionally set in three groups of eight. Sets sold with a twenty-fifth, blank rune follow Ralph Blum's book of 1982; the blank has no historical basis.
Did people divine with the Elder Futhark?
It is not known. Tacitus describes Germanic lots marked with signs about 98 CE, before the oldest runic inscriptions, and no early text sets out a method or a list of meanings.
