The elder futhark consists of 24 runes, which represent the sound values of the Proto-Germanic languages that were spoken at the time. There was a difference between short and long vowels - /u/ was not the same as /uː/.The Elder Futhark is the oldest form of the European runic alphabet, dating back to the 2nd or 3rd century AD. There are six runes for vowel sounds, but their relationship to the sound system of Proto-Germanic is a little complicated.

All three were stops if geminated (that is, two of them in a row).

/g/ was always a fricative except after nasals.

/d/ was a stop at the beginning of words and after nasals, /l/, and /z/.

/b/ was a stop at the beginning of words and after nasals.According to Don Ringe, it’s something like this: There’s a little bit of debate about the details here. For example, look at these two Proto-Germanic words and their modern English counterparts:

The /b/, /d/, and /g/ runes could each produce two different sounds depending on the sounds around them. I typically write “z” when dealing specifically with Proto-Germanic and “ʀ” when dealing with Proto-Norse, which is the more relevant for this website. When it first came into Proto-Germanic it definitely sounded like modern English, but over hundreds of years it eventually merged with /r/ and we’re not exactly sure what the transition was like.

is the “ng” sound in “si ng.” It only came out any time an /n/ fell before a /g/ or a /k/, like in modern English, but there was a specific rune just for this sound even though it could easily be written ᚾᚷ (ng) or ᚾᚲ (nk) instead.

It’s still used in Icelandic words like “sa ga.”

is a except that air still gets through, kind of like, but voiced.

is the “th”-sound in English “ then” or “fa ther.”.

sounds kind of like English /v/ but made with both lips instead of the teeth and lips.

/þ/ is the “th” sound in English “ thank” or “ thing.”.

This later became a regular h-sound at the beginning of words, but retained this older sound in the middle of a word in Old English.

/x/ sounded like the “ch” in the Scottish loch.

Unvoiced: a sound which does not use your vocal cords.

Voiced: a sound which requires you to vibrate your vocal cords.

Fricative: a consonant which constricts airflow, but doesn’t stop it.

Stop: a consonant which causes air to completely stop flowing.

Velar: sounds made in the back of your mouth with the tongue and soft palate like /k/ and /g/.

Dental: sounds made with the tongue and teeth, like /t/ and /d/.

Labial: sounds made with the lips, like /p/ and /b/.

Proto-Germanic had sounds which are now written /kʷ/, /gʷ/, and /xʷ/, which are different from a /k/ and a /w/ which happen to be next to each other, but there weren’t runes for these. I’ve included runes in the following chart, but do remember that this isn’t really accurate – the sounds had already started changing before the runes started being used, but it is very close, and I think this will make it easier for you to wrap your head around the changes that happened later. However, it was still close enough that learning about the Proto-Germanic sound system is a good way to start with learning about what sounds the runes represent.

Runes weren’t used until the Proto-Germanic period was coming to a close and was well on its way to splitting into East (Gothic, Burgundian, etc), West (English, Dutch, German, etc), and North (Icelandic, Foroese, modern Scandinavian languages, etc) Germanic languages. It wasn’t recorded, but scholars have been able to reconstruct a large amount of the language by comparing its descendants, and runic inscriptions have been especially helpful. The ancestor of all the Germanic languages like English, German, Swedish, Icelandic, and others is now called Proto-Germanic. In order to really know the Elder Fuþark, you have to know something about the languages it was used to write.

Elder futhark rune sounds