
Isolated people in Sweden only stopped using runes 100 years ago - curtis
http://sciencenordic.com/isolated-people-sweden-only-stopped-using-runes-100-years-ago
======
krick
This post makes far bigger deal of (somewhat) recent rune usage than it
actually is in my opinion. It's not like this folk used hieroglyphic alphabet
when the rest of the country used latin letters. Runes are basically the same
thing as latin/cyrillic letters. Just one more phonetic alphabet with
different shape of the letters. Well, and it's _old_. Nothing special about
that, really. In fact, it could be more surprising that all germanic languages
adopted latin alphabet so easily. Yeah, there's pretty clear explanation why
this happened, but it _could_ have happened the other way as well.

And local dialects are anything but unusual, they appear even in not so
isolated regions of small european countries. Which is a lot less likely place
for a local dialect to survive than northern Swedish forest is.

~~~
davidw
> And local dialects are anything but unusual, they appear even in not so
> isolated regions of small european countries. Which is a lot less likely
> place for a local dialect to survive than northern Swedish forest is.

I was always amazed by the linguistic diversity in Italy, much of which is
anything but isolated. Even in the plains of the Veneto, you can ride a bike
far enough for the locals to tell that you're from a different area (without
even looking at what's written on your jersey!).

~~~
gioele
In bigger cities like Rome it is not hard to tell which suburb you are from or
you have spent your childhood in from your accent and choice of words.

But then, isn't it the same with English in England?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhninL_G3Fg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhninL_G3Fg)

~~~
vidarh
I live in London, and you can tell South/East/North/West London apart with
relatively little practice. On top of that there are several distinct dialects
in the surrounding areas (1-2 hours travel out of inner London), as well as a
few different sociolects (dialects spoken by distinct socio-economic groups
more than separated by area).

------
legulere
Meh this article is full of inaccuracies.

> because they speak an unique old Norse tongue

They don't speak Old Norse, they simply didn't take part in as many changes as
in Swedish. Älvdalska still sounds pretty Swedish and we have other North
Germanic languages (Icelandic, Faroese) that also kept features that Swedish
dropped.

> The runic script was the dominant written language

The runic script is a script and not a language. It's just another alphabet

> flooded by [...] Germanic words

It's a Germanic language in itself, maybe they mean low German loanwords.

~~~
JupiterMoon
> we have other North Germanic languages (Icelandic, Faroese)

I could well be wrong here (please correct me if I am).

Wasn't Old Norse divided into Eastern and Western? With Icelandic and Faroese
related to Western Old Norse whilst Swedish descends from Eastern. This would
imply that Älvdalska would be related to Eastern Old Norse - hence not totally
unique but still of great interest.

~~~
Arnt
Not really, no.

Nowadays we have nation states and boundaries. We have a buraucracy,
publishers and broadcasters located in the capital that influence the language
spoken in that country. 500, 1000, 1500 years ago it wasn't quite like that.
Things were more fluid.

Älvalska descends from whatever was spoken there, which was presumably closer
to what was spoken in Uppsala at the time than to whatever was spoken in Hamar
(in Norway some way west of Älvdalen). But there wasn't a ban on travel to
Hamar, nor a state that lent prestige to the dialect spoken in the capital.

------
ars
Because of Johannes Bureus people see runes as some sort of magical alphabet,
but really they are no different from any alphabet like Cyrillic, Latin,
Hebrew, Coptic, etc.

~~~
Fjolsvith
Oh? Then you don't really know a lot about the runes.

[http://www.seekthemystery.com](http://www.seekthemystery.com)

~~~
ars
I'm slightly disturbed that I can't tell if that is satire or serious.

~~~
fnordsensei
I don't know about the website, but the mystical side of the runes is very
old. In fact, the story about how the runes came to be is that Oden hung over
the Well of Mimer (Mimer was a giant well versed in magic) for nine days and
nine nights. In the end, he lost one of his eyes, but received the runes
instead. The runes describe the world, so the world can be altered through the
runes (the idea goes). Each rune describes an aspect of the world, like the
Is-rune being both the sound "i"/"ee" and the concept of "ice".

I may have the details wrong. I read about it in school after all. I love the
story though: [http://norse-mythology.org/tales/odins-discovery-of-the-
rune...](http://norse-mythology.org/tales/odins-discovery-of-the-runes/)

Edit: like I wrote above, this is the STORY, ie the cultural myth about how
they came to be. The STORY shows how they were THOUGHT OF as more than a
practical language.

~~~
tP5n
no, that is most definitely not how 'runes came to be'. as others have pointed
out in this thread: there are practical, not mystical, reasons why runes used
to be a thing and it's got nothing to do with giants...

~~~
rawTruthHurts
You didn't quite aprehend what he said.

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xiaoma
This reminds me of hours I spent as a child deciphering the Norse runes
Richard Garriot borrowed for his Ultima games:

[http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/u5lazarus/images/d/dc/U4...](http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/u5lazarus/images/d/dc/U4map.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090828191806)

In the area right below the title: "The Lands of Britannia"

~~~
keedot
In college, we'ed leave messages on friends whiteboards with runes. Back in
'93, there weren't a lot of 'nerd' girls, so it was usually a pretty safe way
to hide in plain sight. Much better than a tie on the doorknob. Granted, it
wasn't Ultima or LOTR, but Beowulf in the Olde English class that we would
cite, because nerdy wasn't cool back then.

------
Svip
When the Nordic Council becomes the Nordic Federation, I hope they re-invent
Old Norse as New Norse as the official language of the Federation. You know,
like they did with Hebrew when they re-declared Israel back in the 1940s.

------
z3t4
Rune is much easier to carve into stone and tree. If you want to see rune in
the wild, you should go to a public toilet or bus booth made of tree. :P

------
dear
Someone should invent a programming language with Runes. It would be cool.

~~~
nitrogen
[https://xkcd.com/356/](https://xkcd.com/356/)

One would expect it to be possible to #define most of the keywords and
functions one would need using the C or C++ preprocessor, though the actual
#include and #define macros would still be in Latin script.

Unfortunately, the C standard (Annex D of [http://www.open-
std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1256.pdf](http://www.open-
std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1256.pdf)) does not allow runes in identifier
names, but it would work for characters explicitly mentioned in the standard
and supported by one's C compiler.

Here's my attempt:

    
    
        #include <stdio.h>
        
        #define _ᚠᛟᚱ for
        #define _ᛁᚠ if
        #define _ᛖᛚᛊᛖ else
        #define _ᚱᛖᛏᚢᚱᚾ return
        #define _ᛗᚨᛁᚾ main
        #define _ᛈᚱᛁᚾᛏᚠ(...) printf(__VA_ARGS__)
        #define _ᛊᛏᚱᛚᛖᚾ(...) strlen(__VA_ARGS__)
        typedef int _ᛁᚾᛏ;
        typedef char _ᚲᚺᚨᚱ;
        
        _ᛁᚾᛏ _ᛗᚨᛁᚾ(_ᛁᚾᛏ _ᚨᚱᚷᚲ, ᚲᚺᚨᚱ *_ᚨᚱᚷᛒ)
        {
            _ᛁᚾᛏ _ᛁ;
        
            _ᚠᛟᚱ(_ᛁ = 1; _ᛁ < _ᚨᚱᚷᚲ; _ᛁ++) {
                _ᛁᚠ(_ᛊᛏᚱᛚᛖᚾ(_ᚨᚱᚷᛒ[ᛁ]) & 1) {
                    _ᚱᛖᛏᚢᚱᚾ("Hello, %s\n", _ᚨᚱᚷᛒ[_ᛁ]);
                } _ᛖᛚᛊᛖ {
                    _ᚱᛖᛏᚢᚱᚾ("Goodbye, %s\n", _ᚨᚱᚷᛒ[_ᛁ]);
                }
            }
        
            _ᚱᛖᛏᚢᚱᚾ 0;
        }
    

Clang and gcc both give errors of this form:

    
    
        rune_c.c:16:2: error: non-ASCII characters are not
        allowed outside of literals and identifiers
        _ᛁᚾᛏ _ᛗᚨᛁᚾ(_ᛁᚾᛏ _ᚨᚱᚷᚲ, ᚲᚺᚨᚱ *_ᚨᚱᚷᛒ)
         ^
    

I used
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runes#Runic_alphabets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runes#Runic_alphabets)
as a reference.

For other languages, one should be able to use Ruby metaprogramming to make it
possible to write Ruby using nothing but runes and punctuation. One would have
to define runic methods to replace the functionality _def_ , _class_ ,
_module_ , and related keywords, but tricks like _instance_eval_ make that
possible.

~~~
moogly
It's sad that Chrome on Windows doesn't want to render those Unicode
characters. The only mainstream browser that doesn't.

------
arethuza
Great example of runes on Orkney, Scotland - 1000 year old graffiti in a
structure almost 5000 years old:

[http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/maeshowe/maeshrunes.htm](http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/maeshowe/maeshrunes.htm)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maeshowe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maeshowe)

------
INTPenis
Fascinating but I would love to know how common christianity was in this area.
I've always been more fascinated with the old norse religion than its runes.

Also my personal view has always been that the catholic church actively waged
a holy war to convert the nordic heathens. That any bad press the vikings
received was simply propaganda from the victors who wrote the history books.

~~~
JuriadoB
>I would love to know how common christianity was in this area.

A hundred years ago it would be close to 100% christianity. The runes was
simply a traditional way of writing. Norse mythology is of course a lot of fun
but it's sad how little we know of it and it's traditions.

------
Aloha
I love reading about how language evolves - I've heard of similar isolated
dialects of Spanish in very rural New Mexico.

~~~
MrJagil
Can you give us some more information?

~~~
daemin
I know that it is not an authoritative source, but there was an episode of an
Anthony Bourdain show which travelled to Mexico / MidWest kind of area where
they spoke Spanish that was mostly unchanged since 400 years ago.

------
smegel
Hmm so how are runes any different to an alphabet then? Each one has a sound,
and largely corresponds to the Latin alphabet.

I thought runes were like pictographs, each one had a _meaning_ , and maybe
several readings or sounds.

~~~
k8tte
> I thought runes were like pictographs, each one had a meaning, and maybe
> several readings or sounds.

various hieroglyphic writing systems are pictographics. runes are not

~~~
smegel
So what _are_ runes then? Does the Latin alphabet consist of runes?

~~~
ars
Runes to you sound like mystical shapes, or words or something.

It's not so.

It is simply the name of an alphabet, much like you have Cyrillic, Latin,
Hebrew, Coptic, etc. You have Runic.

That's all. It's just the name for an alphabet.

------
roghummal
This article doesn't properly projekt the magik of runes for one or more of
the following reasons:

1\. Runes are like magik (see my site runesaremagik.tumbler.com)

2\. Who cares? Elvish.

3\. Who cares? Klingon.

4\. Who cares? ... everybodycares.js. It'll make your life as a front-end
full-stack developer engineer designer hacker a lot easier by using stuff you
already know to make new stuff with runes.

5\. Heresy happens when you aren't sufficiently vigilant. Check your corners.
They're coming for us.

