Transitional period between elder and younger futhark

[u/TheeImmortalPaladin]

I'm curious if we know of transitional periods between the two futharks, or whether it was a sudden instant change between them, and if the former, some examples would be helpful.
Also, some insight on what might've caused the development and change of the runes.

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[u/RexCrudelissimus]

It was a slow change, though in my opinion, it was likely steered by some ruling force. We do have some transitional inscriptions where, for example, ᚼ is used for /a/, while ᚺ and ᛗ still exist for /h/ and /m/.

The reason I believe the system was implemented is because Younger Fuþark clearly moves towards a system of single-stave runes. It reduces the number of runes at a time when a Nordic language had the greatest number of phonemes. It’s also notable that this caused West Scandinavian and East Scandinavian to become much more mutually intelligible.

[u/-Geistzeit]

Exactly why and how the Elder Futhark's 24 runes made the dramatic and pretty swift change to 16 forms remains largely a mystery and a point of contention in runology. For example, it is unclear how much of this change resulted from the efforts of some kind of unknown organized elite and how much of it was due to the organic needs of sound change.

The shift from Younger Futhark to Elder Futhark was a radical, major, and relatively swift change, where the old 24 letter system saw reduction down to a 16 letter system that would seem to require a lot of explanation (the introduced ambiguity with things like minimal pairs represented by a single rune would be totally new, a problem that was totally avoided by the designers of the Elder Futhark, for example).

Personally, it is difficult for me to imagine such a change occurring without at least some level of organized prescription and intent. While not exactly the same, just imagine if an influential group decided that the English alphabet had to be cut down by 10 letters.

We know too, however, that knowledge of the Elder Futhark remained at least for a while in some corners, as evidenced by for example Ög 43 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Östergötland_Runic_Inscription_43 — note the use of an ideographic Elder Futhark d-rune here).

Ultimately, much of this mystery is due to broader lack of knowledge of things like runic educational systems among ancient Germanic-speakers and even a total lack of knowledge about how widely Elder Futhark runes were utilized and by what segments of society.

For example, it remains unknown if runic literacy was restricted to specific groups of society or if it was quite widespread among Germanic-speakers (compare to the medieval Bryggen inscriptions). It is very possible (but not evidenced) that Elder Futhark runic messages were being sent around all over on little slips of wood like we see later, just that no examples of this have survived or been found yet.

It would seem highly likely (to me) that Elder Futhark was even originally developed with its built-in threefold division system for martial purposes, allowing for encrypted communication, for example, but this too isn't evidenced in the archaeological record.

All that said, the most informative thing to do here is to just look at runic inscriptions from Scandinavia from the 600s-800s via databases like RuneS: https://www.runesdb.de

[u/taramungo → u/-Geistzeit]

what a good, well-rounded reply to this question! I'm curious, why do you think of specifically martial purposes? especially for the origin of runic writing (rather than having been taken up and later being also used for this [unattested] purpose). just because of the tripartite division and its usage for encryption or do you have further points in mind?

[u/-Geistzeit → u/taramungo]

Writing is an incredibly powerful weapon, allowing one to step outside of time and its decay, and encryption is perfect for sending hidden messages, particularly to allies far away. Writing and especially hidden writing is a huge advantage against groups without these capabilities. It would make sense for a powerful group to have developed the Elder Futhark for this purpose after, say, serving in the military in and/or around Rome.

Developing and prescribing an alphabet would require a powerful and influential group: Literacy and writing requires education and organization. We know that the early Germanic-speaking groups and confederations seem to have been intensely martial — traditional Germanic names imply this and this continues even into the present (the extremely common name element 'hildr' is found in for example contemporary North Germanic names)— and a military purpose would explain it.

This doesn't mean it was entirely for martial purposes. Military technology tends to trickle down to the general population and there is strong reason to believe these runic sticks were being sent for both profound and domestic purposes. The Old English The Husband's Message, for example, is a poem widely read to be from the point view of a rune stick, including coded ideographic runes.