I'm not sure how to write in runic ? I get the runes and all but to write in runic has me confused, could you please explain with the letter corresponding aswell ? (Elder Futhark)
This is a doozy of a question, indeed! It’s actually more complicated than you might think. This is how I’ve come to understand it. As a summary, there is no right way to translate Elder Futhark. Elder Futhark is an ancient Germanic language. The runes represent sounds–some of those sounds cannot be written in the English language.
What’s worse, ancient Germanic tribes did not have any orthography, either. Like both ‘through hardships to the stars’ and ‘thru hardships 2 the stars’ having equal rights to be ‘right’ variants. Runes were used phonetically, that is literally as people heard what they pronounced. So even if you don’t write in modern English, it doesn’t solve all of the riddle. Besides, some words, such as personal names, simply cannot be translated into the ancient Germanic languages for which the original runic systems were invented.
MORE OR LESS THE CLOSEST HISTORICALLY CORRECT LETTER CONVERSIONS
Even though there were no orthographic rules at the age when the runes were in usage, some ways to write them are more or less in line with the historical evidence, while others are not. Thus instead of ‘right’ ways to spell something in runes, I suggest to speak about more or less ‘authentic’ or ‘historical’ variants. Below are some recommendation based on my personal understanding of what ‘authentic’ or ‘historical’ is. By no means do I think that other approaches are ‘wrong’.
MORE OR LESS THE CLOSEST HISTORICALLY CORRECT MEANINGS
Norse runes aren’t ideograms either. Normally, they do not stand for abstract notions like ‘happiness’ or ‘joy’. Neither are they logograms, that is, they do not stand for all kinds of words like ‘go,’ ‘bird,’ or ‘angry’, unlike Japanese kanji or Chinese Han characters. After all, there are over 50,000 Han characters and this pretty much explains why you can possibly ask, what is the character for ‘joy’ or ‘happiness’. There should be some. Even though to read a Chinese newspaper you would need to learn only about 3,000 characters, the 24 runes of Elder Futhark cannot work the same way simply because they are so few. There is no human society that needs only 24 words to function.
In some instances, however, Elder Futhark runes may stand for whole words. These words are usually the names of the corresponding runes. There are English, Gothic and Scandinavian manuscripts that list them, which makes possible the reconstruction of the Common Germanic forms. The reconstruction in comparative linguistics works more or less like that: ancient Germanic variants for the word ‘stone’ were Goth. stains, ON steinn, OE stān, OS sten, OHG stein. The runic form stainaR and comparison with early Germanic borrowings in Finnish (cf. Finnish kuningas ‘king’ and OS kuning) lead to a supposed Common Germanic form *stainaz, which is nowhere attested: Gothic and Finnish borrowings exclude -R, Gothic -s represents the ancient *-z. The reconstructed ending *-az corresponds to Greek -os and Archaic Latin -os, where IE *o is represented by the Common Germanic *a and IE *s is represented by Common Germanic *z. Reconstructed forms are usually marked with the *asterisk sign.
The names and meanings of the runes are as follows:
*fehu, ‘cattle’. Goth. faihu; OE feoh; ON fé; OHG feho, fihu.
*uruz, ‘aurochs’. Goth. uraz; OE ur; ON úrr. A long vowel: /u:/.
*þurisaz, ‘giant’. OE þyrs; ON þurs; OHG duris; OS thuris. The sound value is as modern English /th/ in thing.
*ansuz, ‘god’. Goth. anza (Dat. Sg.); OE ōs; ON áss; OHG ans-.
*raido, ‘riding’. OE ræd; ON reið.
*kauna, ‘sore’. OE cēn; ON kaun.
*gebo, ‘gift’. Goth. gifa; OE giefu; ON gjöf; OHG geba.
*wunjo, ‘joy’. Goth. winja; OE wynn.
*hagalaz, ‘hail’. Goth. hagl; OE hægl; ON hagall.
*naudiz, ‘need’. Goth. nauþs; ON nauð.
*isa, ‘ice’. Goth. iiz; OE, OHG īs; ON iss. Long vowel: /i:/.
*jera, ‘year’. ON ár; OHG jār. The sound value is as modern English /y/ in year.
*eihwaz, ‘yew’. Goth. uuaer; OE eoh. The sound value is between /e/ and /i/, as it developed out of IE /ei/.
*perþo, uncertain meaning.
*algiz, ‘protection’. Goth. ezec; OE eolh; ON yr.
*sowilo, ‘sun’. Goth. sunno; OE sunne; ON sól; OHG sunna.
*tiwaz, ‘Tiw, god of war’. ON Týr.
*berkana, ‘birch’. OE beorc; ON bjarkan; OHG bircha.
*ehwaz, ‘horse’. Goth. evz; OE eh. Short vowel: /e/.
*mannaz, ‘man’. Goth. manna; OE mann; ON maðr.
*laguz, ‘water’. OE lēac; ON lögr.
*inguz, ‘the god Ing’. Goth. enguz; OE Ing. The sound value is as modern English /ng/ in thing.
*oþila, ‘inherited possession’. Goth. utal; OE oþel, eþel. Short vowel: /o/.
*dagaz, ‘day’. Goth. dags; OE dæg; ON dagr; OHG tag.
Now, if you’re using the Elder Futhark rune set for magical purposes such as:
a magical alphabet for your Book of Shadows
building a sigil out of runes
using a singular rune as a sigil
then the rules are a little more lax.
Magic is the act of focusing your will—so if you believe a rune has a certain meaning, then it has that certain meaning by the act of your will. And if you believe in the creative power of the collective consciousness, then realize that several practitioners before you have adhered to “translations” on the internet and in published books that couldn’t be farther from the historical information above—yet they work as intended. *So to summarize, you can make your own translations using the historical information above, or use pre-made translations found elsewhere. If you’d like my opinion on how to go about making your own transcription from the information given here, just let me know!