Anglo-Saxon runes in the context of "Old English Latin alphabet"

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⭐ Core Definition: Anglo-Saxon runes

Anglo-Saxon runes or Anglo-Frisian runes are runes that were used by the Anglo-Saxons and Medieval Frisians (collectively called Anglo-Frisians) as an alphabet in their native writing system, recording both Old English and Old Frisian (Old English: ᚱᚢᚾᚪ, romanized: rūna, lit.'rune'). Today, the characters are known collectively as the futhorc (ᚠᚢᚦᚩᚱᚳ, fuþorc) from the first six runes and their sound values. The futhorc was a development from the older co-Germanic 24-character runic alphabet, known today as Elder Futhark, expanding to 28 characters in its older form and up to 34 characters in its younger form. In contemporary Scandinavia, the Elder Futhark developed into a shorter 16-character alphabet, today simply called Younger Futhark.

Use of the Anglo-Frisian runes is likely to have started in the 5th century onward and they continued to see use into the High Middle Ages. By the 8th century, they were eventually overtaken by the Old English Latin alphabet introduced to Anglo-Saxon England by missionaries at the end of the 6th century. Futhorc runes were no longer in common use by the 11th century, but MS Oxford St John's College 17 indicates that fairly accurate understanding of them persisted into at least the 12th century.

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👉 Anglo-Saxon runes in the context of Old English Latin alphabet

The Old English Latin alphabet generally consisted of about 24 letters, and was used for writing Old English from the 8th to the 12th centuries. Of these letters, most were directly adopted from the Latin alphabet, two were modified Latin letters (Æ, Ð), and two developed from the runic alphabet (Ƿ, Þ). The letters Q and Z were essentially left unused outside of foreign names from Latin and Greek. The letter J had not yet come into use. The letter K was used by some writers but not by others. W gained usage in late Old English under Norman influence, as seen towards the end of the Peterborough Chronicle manuscript, though in this period W was still a ligature and not a full-fledged letter. The manuscripts MS Harley 208, Stowe MS 57, and Cotton Titus D 18 differ in how they arrange the non-standard Old English letters (Harley has Ƿ–ЖƖÞ, Stowe has Ƿ–ЖÞ, Titus has Ƿ–Þ–Ð), but all three manuscripts place them after the standard Latin letters.

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Anglo-Saxon runes in the context of Æ

Æ (lowercase: æ) is a character formed from the letters a and e, originally a ligature representing the Latin diphthong ae. It has been promoted to the status of a letter in some languages, including Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese. It was also used in both Old Swedish, before being replaced by ä, and Old English, where it was eventually dropped entirely in favour of a. The modern International Phonetic Alphabet uses it to represent the near-open front unrounded vowel (the sound represented by the 'a' in English words such as cat). Diacritic variants include Ǣ/ǣ, Ǽ/ǽ, Æ̀/æ̀, Æ̂/æ̂ and Æ̃/æ̃.

As a letter of the Old English Latin alphabet, it was called æsc, "ash tree", after the Anglo-Saxon futhorc rune which it transliterated; its traditional name in English is still ash, or æsh (Old English: æsċ) if the ligature is included.

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Anglo-Saxon runes in the context of Œ

Œ (minuscule: œ), in English known as ethel or œthel (also spelt ēðel or odal), is a Latin alphabet grapheme, a ligature of o and e. In medieval and early modern Latin, it was used in borrowings from Greek that originally contained the diphthong οι, and in a few non-Greek words. These usages continue in English and French. In French, the words that were borrowed from Latin and contained the Latin diphthong written as œ now generally have é or è; but œ is still used in some non-learned French words, representing open-mid front rounded vowels, such as œil ("eye") and sœur ("sister").

It is used in the modern orthography for Old West Norse and is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent the open-mid front rounded vowel. In English runology, œ ɶ is used to transliterate the rune othala (Old English: ēðel, "estate, ancestral home"), of which English derives its name.

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Anglo-Saxon runes in the context of Elder Futhark

The Elder Futhark (or Fuþark, /ˈfðɑːrk/), also known as the Older Futhark, Old Futhark, or Germanic Futhark, is the oldest form of the runic alphabets. It was a writing system used by Germanic peoples in the Migration Period. Inscriptions are found on artifacts including jewelry, amulets, plateware, tools, and weapons, as well as runestones, from the 2nd to the 8th centuries.

In Scandinavia, beginning in the late 8th century, the script was simplified to the Younger Futhark, while the Anglo-Saxons and Frisians instead extended it, giving rise to the Anglo-Saxon futhorc. Both the Anglo-Saxon futhorc and the Younger Futhark remained in use during the Early and the High Middle Ages respectively, but knowledge of how to read the Elder Futhark was forgotten until 1865, when it was deciphered by Norwegian scholar Sophus Bugge.

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Anglo-Saxon runes in the context of Franks Casket

The Franks Casket (or the Auzon Casket) is a small Anglo-Saxon whale's bone (not "whalebone" in the sense of baleen) chest from the early 8th century, now in the British Museum. The casket is densely decorated with knife-cut narrative scenes in flat two-dimensional low-relief and with inscriptions mostly in Anglo-Saxon runes. Generally thought to be of Northumbrian origin, it is of unique importance for the insight it gives into early Anglo-Saxon art and culture. Both identifying the images and interpreting the runic inscriptions has generated a considerable amount of scholarship.

The imagery is very diverse in its subject matter and derivations, and includes a single Christian image, the Adoration of the Magi, along with images derived from Roman history (Emperor Titus) and Roman mythology (Romulus and Remus), as well as a depiction of at least one legend indigenous to the Germanic peoples: that of Weyland the Smith. It has also been suggested that there may be an episode from the Sigurd legend, an otherwise lost episode from the life of Weyland's brother Egil, a Homeric legend involving Achilles, and perhaps even an allusion to the legendary founding of England by Hengist and Horsa.

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Anglo-Saxon runes in the context of Ur (rune)

Ur is the recorded name for the rune in both Old English and Old Norse, found as the second rune in all futharks (runic alphabets starting with F, U, Þ, Ą, R, K), i.e. the Germanic Elder Futhark, the Anglo-Frisian Futhark and the Norse Younger Futhark, with continued use in the later medieval runes, early modern runes and Dalecarlian runes.

It corresponds to the letter u in the Latin alphabet, but also carries other sound values, especially in Younger Futhark, where its sound values correspond to the vowels: [u] , [ø] , [y] and [œ] etc., and the consonants: [v] and [w] etc., in the Latin alphabet.

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Anglo-Saxon runes in the context of St Cuthbert's coffin

What is usually referred to as St Cuthbert's coffin is a fragmentary oak coffin in Durham Cathedral, pieced together in the 20th century, which between AD 698 and 1827 contained the remains of Saint Cuthbert, who died in 687. In fact when Cuthbert's remains were yet again reburied in 1827 in a new coffin, some 6,000 pieces of up to four previous layers of coffin were left in the burial, and then finally removed in 1899. This coffin is thought to be Cuthbert's first wooden coffin, and probably to date to 698, when his remains were moved from a stone sarcophagus in the abbey church at Lindisfarne to the main altar.

The coffin is almost the only surviving example of what was no doubt a very large body of Anglo-Saxon wood carving, being inscribed or engraved with linear images which have tituli in Latin lettering and Anglo-Saxon runes with names of apostles and saints. Many names are illegible.

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