Cipher runes, or cryptic runes, are the cryptographical replacement of the letters of the

runic alphabet Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...

Preservation

The knowledge of cipher runes was best preserved in

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

, and during the 17th–18th centuries, Icelandic scholars produced several treatises on the subject. The most notable of these is the manuscript ''Runologia'' by Jón Ólafsson (1705–1779), which he wrote in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

(1732–1752). It thoroughly treats numerous cipher runes and runic ciphers, and it is now preserved in the

Arnamagnæan Institute The Arnamagnæan Institute ( da, Den Arnamagnæanske Samling, formerly ''Det Arnamagnæanske Institut'') is a teaching and research institute established in 1956 to further the study of the manuscripts in the Arnamagnæan Manuscript Collection, th ...

in Copenhagen. Jón Ólafsson's treatise presents the

Younger Futhark The Younger Futhark, also called Scandinavian runes, is a runic alphabet and a reduced form of the Elder Futhark, with only 16 characters, in use from about the 9th century, after a "transitional period" during the 7th and 8th centuries. The ...

in the Viking Age order, which means that the m-rune precedes the l-rune. This small detail was of paramount importance for the interpretation of Viking Age cipher runes because in the 13th century the two runes had changed places through the influence of the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and th ...

where ''l'' precedes ''m''. Since the medieval

runic calendar A Runic calendar (also Rune staff or Runic Almanac) is a perpetual calendar, variants of which were used in Northern Europe until the 19th century. A typical runic calendar consisted of several horizontal lines of symbols, one above the o ...

used the post-13th-century order, the early runologists of the 17th–18th centuries believed that the l-m order was the original one, and the order of the runes is of vital importance for the interpretation of cipher runes.

Structure of the ciphers

In the runic alphabet, the runes have their special order and are divided into groups. In the

, which has 16 letters, they are divided into three groups. The Icelandic tradition calls the first group (f, u, þ, ã, r and k) " Freyr's ''ætt''", the second group (h, n, i, a and s) " Hagal's ''ætt''" and the third group (t, b, m, l and R) Tyr’s ''ætt''". In order to make the inscription even harder to decipher, Freyr's ''ætt'' and Tyr's ''ætt'' change places so that group one is group three and vice versa. However, in several cases the ætts are counted in their correct order, and not backwards. There are numerous forms of cipher runes, but they are all based on the principle of giving the number of the ''ætt'' and the number of the rune within the ''ætt''. The tent runes are based on strokes added to the four arms of an X shape: Each X represents two runes and is read clockwise, starting with the top left arm. The strokes on the first arm representing the ''ætt'' (row of eight runes: (1) ''fuþarkgw,'' (2) ''hnijæpzs,'' (3) ''tbemlŋod),'' the strokes on the second arm denote the order within that ''ætt''. The branch runes are similar, the strokes being attached to a vertical stem and branching upwards. Strokes on the left indicate the ''ætt'', and strokes on the right the order within the ''ætt''. There are variants of these two schemes, such as inverting the numbers (counting backwards the ''ætts,'' and the runes within the ''ætts).'' Tree runes and hook runes are like branch runes, with the strokes pointing downward diagonally and curving downward, respectively. These may be mixed: in the phrase ''ek vitki'' at left, ''ek'' is written in straightforward branch runes, but ''vitki'' is written with the ''ætts'' as hooks and the order as branches. There are several

runestone A runestone is typically a raised stone with a runic inscription, but the term can also be applied to inscriptions on boulders and on bedrock. The tradition began in the 4th century and lasted into the 12th century, but most of the runestones d ...

s using such devices of obscuring the inscription, especially found in Orkney. A comparable system of letter modification is that of the

Ogham Ogham ( Modern Irish: ; mga, ogum, ogom, later mga, ogam, label=none ) is an Early Medieval alphabet used primarily to write the early Irish language (in the "orthodox" inscriptions, 4th to 6th centuries AD), and later the Old Irish langu ...

"scales" recorded in the

Ogam Tract ''In Lebor Ogaim'' ("The Book of Ogams"), also known as the Ogam Tract, is an Old Irish treatise on the ogham alphabet. It is preserved in R.I.A. MS 23 P 12 308–314 (AD 1390), T.C.D. H.3.18, 26.1–35.28 (AD 1511) and National Library of ...

Notes

References

* . {{list of writing systems Runology History of cryptography Classical cryptography sv:Lönnrunor

Preservation

Structure of the ciphers

See also

Notes

References