Runology
Runology is the study of the
Runic alphabets and inscriptions. It was initiated by
Johannes Bureus (1568-1652) who was very interested in the linguistics of the
Geatish language (
Götiska språket), i.e.
Old Norse. But he also viewed runes as holy or magical in a
kabbalistic sense.
The study of runes was continued by
Olof Rudbeck Sr (1630-1702) and presented in his collection
Atlantica. The
physicist Anders Celsius (1701-44) further extended the science of runes and travelled around the whole of Sweden to examine the
bautastenar (
megaliths, today termed
rune stones). Most of the runestones are found in Southern
Scandinavia, with the highest concentration found in the
Mälar basin.
Today, Runology forms a specialized branch of
Germanic linguistics. The early runic (
Elder Futhark) inscriptions are important as the earliest attestations of Germanic languages, but their importance can be over-estimated, since, out of a total of some 350 items (plus some 100 in
Anglo-Frisian Futhorc), most are very short, and most are hardly comprehensible, and those that are contain rather repetitive messages. Medieval (
Younger Futhark) runestones are not so much of linguistic as of historical interest in documenting
Viking Age Scandinavia, most of them bearing formulaic epitaphs (for example: "X had this stone raised over Y, who was an excellent person, Z carved the runes"). Of these, some 6,000 specimens survive.
*
Rundata*
Sveriges runinskrifter
