Note: Most Old Norse material hails from Scandanavia and Iceland. Much of the scholarly material has not been translated into English. Much more of the source information was never written down, or was written down subsequent to the advent of Christianity. This leaves the field ripe for speculation, and for figuring out "what works", or at least seems to. I do my share herein, but will admit this. A couple of scholarly (in an overview way) English language sites associated with universities are listed below.
Some recommended books:
H.R. Ellis-Davidson, Myths of Northern Europe, Penguin Books.
Freya Aswynn, Leaves of Yggdrasil, 1990, Llewellyn
Publications.
Edred Thorsson, Runelore, 1987, Samuel Weiser, Inc.
The Elder Futhark (Norse Runes) are a collection of 24 symbols divided into
three families or aettr. They were inscribed on amulets for protection, luck
in battle, etc. As the old Norse language had no future tense, these
runes were not used for definitive future predictions, but could be
consulted to understand trends based in the present (leaving the reader
to extrapolate outward as appropriate). The 25th blank rune available in
some sets is a modern invention not used by most students of the Runes.
Some of the runes as depicted above were also written in other styles.
The Aettr:
The First Aett
The Second Aett
The Third Aett
My goal is now to learn how to read Old Norse/Old Icelandic, at least well enough to get somewhere with studies in greater depth. I'm not great with languages, so I don't see massive progress occurring on this in the near future. Meanwhile:Further Futhark:
How I stumbled over the Futhark
Some thoughts on using the Futhark
Some Futhark-related websites:
Runes, the Alphabet of Mystery Material on
mythologies, Norse Gods, and the runes themselves.
Viking Culture and Norse Civilization
-- research materials for
understanding the background. Some runic information. Geared towards the
informative rather than the speculative.
Swedish and Viking History
-- a site in process, but containing some interesting articles on various portions of
the mythology, as well as runic information. Bibligraphy present.
FUTHARK Fonts (for
the Mac) -- some look like they'd be cool, but I don't run a Mac.
Runecaster
-- for those who want online rune readings. Might be fun, at the least.
A Futhark Font for Windows:
Elder Futhark TrueType font for Windows.
Supplied as freeware by Jef Powell.
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