Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind

Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications

Page 523

522
THE ALPHABET necessary not to overlook the fact that the earliest Norwegian short system resembled the Swedish one, and the Manx system of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, as represented by the Kirk Michael stone, c. 1100 (Fig. 235), and other monuments, seems to have been connected with this early Norwegian short system, and can therefore be considered as a variety of both, the Swedish and the Norwegian systems. It was only at a later stage, that is, during the eleventh-twelfth centuries, that the Norwegian short system became strongly influenced by the Danish type and produced some independent developments, so as to become differentiated from the Swedish.
The Manx system can be divided into two main sub-divisions each distinguished by the use of the fourth rune, which in some inscriptions represents the nasalized a, while in others it stands for 0. A peculiar feature of the Manx runes is the absence of the sixteenth Scandinavian rune.
The Dotted Runes (Stungnar Rúnir)
It is not yet established where the dotted runes were invented or first used. According to some scholars, it was in Norway, according to others, it was in Denmark. It was, however, probably due to the influence of the Anglian runes that the Scandinavian systems began to be enlarged by the so-called pointed or dotted runes. The earliest dotted runes. appearing about the year A.D. 1000, were the symbols for y and e; the y, of Anglo-Saxon origin, was a u inside of which an i was marked; it seems that after this model, the symbol for e was constructed out of the i. A little later different consonantal symbols were also distinguished; out of the k a special letter for 8 was constructed, a dot on a runic consonantal symbol usually indicating that it was voiced. The dotted runic system spread over all the Scandinavian lands, even to the island of Kingigtorssuak, west of Greenland.
During the eleventh and twelfth centuries the employment of the dotted runes became general in Denmark, although it was not com --sometimes only the first and last runes were dotted. In Norway the use of the dotted runes coincided with the fusion of the short Danish and Swedish-Norwegian systems, as a result of which a complete dotted runic alphabet was produced, aiming probably at a systematic representation of the Old Norse language in order to avoid the ambiguity of the representation of more sounds by one symbol. This attempt, based probably on the Roman alphabet, could obviously not succeed owing to the increasing diffusion of Latin script. Although single monuments cut in the systematic dotted system, and dated in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, appear in many parts of Scandinavia, it seems that it was widely employed only in Gothland. There, however, appears a special variety of the dotted runic system.