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Runes: A Concise History
With their distinctive and other-worldly appearance, runes--an ancient alphabet used to write Germanic languages--provide our only first-hand record of the customs and beliefs of peoples living on the northern fringe of the Roman Empire during a period of mass migration and momentous social upheaval. Emerging from obscure origins early in the first millennium, the runic script found new roles in Early Medieval England and Viking-Age Scandinavia, bearing witness to changing faiths, documenting the exploits of Norse settlers and mercenaries as they redrew the map of Europe, and giving us a rare window into the lives of medieval merchants in the North Atlantic.
A Concise History recounts the fascinating story of the runic script and its evolution, whilst using the information provided by runic inscriptions to trace some of the major events to shape the medieval North, from migration, settlement, and conquest to conversion and the beginnings of Old English literature. From salacious graffiti (including a rune stick mentioning the fact that 'Árni the priest wants to have Inga') and intimate inscriptions on jewelry (such as a charm on a lead plaque stating that an illness-causing dwarf is dead), to towering runestones expressing the power and prestige of Viking rulers, the stories told through runic objects offer insight into cultures on the peripheries of Europe as they came to shape the medieval world. Knowledge of runes travelled across the North Sea with Germanic tribes migrating from the Continent and the script proceeded to evolve differently in England, being used alongside the Roman alphabet for several centuries and coming to play a key role in Northumbria's Golden Age and the beginnings of an English literature. Here is the story of an extraordinary but little-known writing system that seems opaque to us yet offers a window on the wider social history of migration, settlement, and cultural exchange in pre-modern Europe.
Through six chapters focused on distinct periods, author Tom Birkett introduces the reader to some of the highlights of the runic corpus, including exciting objects only discovered in the last few years. Runes have come to increasing prominence through adaptations of Tolkien's fiction for the screen and their appropriation by the extreme right. This complex legacy of the reception and misuse of runes is an important facet of the cultural history of the script, and the final chapter brings the story of runes into the present day by addressing these many modern afterlives.
A Concise History recounts the fascinating story of the runic script and its evolution, whilst using the information provided by runic inscriptions to trace some of the major events to shape the medieval North, from migration, settlement, and conquest to conversion and the beginnings of Old English literature. From salacious graffiti (including a rune stick mentioning the fact that 'Árni the priest wants to have Inga') and intimate inscriptions on jewelry (such as a charm on a lead plaque stating that an illness-causing dwarf is dead), to towering runestones expressing the power and prestige of Viking rulers, the stories told through runic objects offer insight into cultures on the peripheries of Europe as they came to shape the medieval world. Knowledge of runes travelled across the North Sea with Germanic tribes migrating from the Continent and the script proceeded to evolve differently in England, being used alongside the Roman alphabet for several centuries and coming to play a key role in Northumbria's Golden Age and the beginnings of an English literature. Here is the story of an extraordinary but little-known writing system that seems opaque to us yet offers a window on the wider social history of migration, settlement, and cultural exchange in pre-modern Europe.
Through six chapters focused on distinct periods, author Tom Birkett introduces the reader to some of the highlights of the runic corpus, including exciting objects only discovered in the last few years. Runes have come to increasing prominence through adaptations of Tolkien's fiction for the screen and their appropriation by the extreme right. This complex legacy of the reception and misuse of runes is an important facet of the cultural history of the script, and the final chapter brings the story of runes into the present day by addressing these many modern afterlives.
- GenresHistory
216 pages, Hardcover
Published December 12, 2025
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February 9, 2026What links the Hagia Sophia, a leonine statue in Venice, the Mines of Moria, and Nazi occultism? This has not, to my knowledge, been set as a sequence to solve on Only Connect, but if it were, a correct answer might be: runes.
Runes are ancient symbols, associated with Scandinavia and characterised by sharp lines and angles, suited for carving into rock, metal, and bone. Today they may conjure images of warriors, magic, seafaring longships, and bearded gods, and additionally fantastical realms such as J.R.R. Tolkien’s Khazad-dûm. Runes are suffused with meaning. Be it carved into jewellery or inked into skin, a single rune can imbue its bearer with impressions of subarctic fortitude, primeval power, gruff masculinity, or even reactionary contempt. In 20th- and 21st-century history such associations have made runes into emblems for unsavoury movements on the political right, who have read into them a racially perfect past. Strata of recent uses and abuses have for many people today obscured runes’ original purpose: to write down sounds.
Tom Birkett’s Runes: A Concise History<>/i> breaks off these later accretions and unearths their long history. Runes’ primary function as an alphabetic writing system is underlined throughout, as part of the ‘uphill battle’ against persistent misconceptions. This rebuttal gives Runes a mission, and it marshals many sources of evidence to form a solid shield-wall against tireless assaults of mistruth.
Read the rest of the review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/...
Danny Bate is a linguist and the author of Why Q Needs U: A History of Our Letters and How We Use Them (Blink, 2025).
Runes are ancient symbols, associated with Scandinavia and characterised by sharp lines and angles, suited for carving into rock, metal, and bone. Today they may conjure images of warriors, magic, seafaring longships, and bearded gods, and additionally fantastical realms such as J.R.R. Tolkien’s Khazad-dûm. Runes are suffused with meaning. Be it carved into jewellery or inked into skin, a single rune can imbue its bearer with impressions of subarctic fortitude, primeval power, gruff masculinity, or even reactionary contempt. In 20th- and 21st-century history such associations have made runes into emblems for unsavoury movements on the political right, who have read into them a racially perfect past. Strata of recent uses and abuses have for many people today obscured runes’ original purpose: to write down sounds.
Tom Birkett’s Runes: A Concise History<>/i> breaks off these later accretions and unearths their long history. Runes’ primary function as an alphabetic writing system is underlined throughout, as part of the ‘uphill battle’ against persistent misconceptions. This rebuttal gives Runes a mission, and it marshals many sources of evidence to form a solid shield-wall against tireless assaults of mistruth.
Read the rest of the review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/...
Danny Bate is a linguist and the author of Why Q Needs U: A History of Our Letters and How We Use Them (Blink, 2025).
Displaying 1 of 1 review