The Nordic Runes came into use some time in the second century BCE and remained in use until as late as the 17th century CE in Iceland. They where commonly used in the Scandinavian, Germanic, and Anglo Saxon regions. The angular nature of their design is believed to derive from their use as characters cut into wood or stamped into metal. The ancient Norse believed that the use of runes would lend magical power to an object on which they where inscribed; the runes where believed to be a gift from the gods to
mankind.

There are a number of surviving artifacts with runic inscriptions on them, these include intricately carved boxes, runestones , a number of weapons including swords with runes on the blade and hilt, sticks of wood left in graves, and a number of poems concerning the runes. The runes where commonly used as esoteric characters with hidden meanings, and this can still be seen in their names, which refer to powerful aspects of Nordic life such as sleet, ice, cattle, aurochs, sun. These names stand alone as individual concepts, and there are many runic inscriptions which simply draw on the power of the letters as representative characters without forming them into words. The runes are also representative of phonetic values and where used in a secular fashion as a written alphabet. Many runic inscriptions use the letters in the latter fashion to spell out relevant fraises or incantations instead of relying solely on the power of individual letters. Here are a few examples of rune poetry describing its mythological origin and the meaning of its characters.

The Runatàl