Positional Notation
In some peculiar instances runic numbers have been used as numerals in a base ten positional system, replacing the Arabic numerals. It is unknown if this use existed before the 19th century.
The oldest authenticated use of this notation is in the notes of an 18-year-old journeyman tailor, Edward Larsson, that are dated to 1885 in pentimal runes. A copy of the note was first published by the Institute for Dialectology, Onomastics and Folklore Research in Umeå in 2004.
This positional notation however appears on two unrelated sets of rune stones allegedly discovered in North America. The first is the Kensington Runestone found in 1898, the second are the three Spirit Pond runestones found in 1971. All refer to pre-Columbian Norse exploration of the Americas.
The authors of the North American rune stones do not seem to understand the positional notation or the concept of zero. The rune for 10 is used interchangeably for 0, 10, and <1,0> with little consistency. The inscription stone from Spirit Pond contains the sequences ahr:011 and ahr:00, which have been read as year 1011 and year 1010 respectively. It is unclear if the notation can represent all numbers unambiguously; for example, it may not be possible to distinguish 1010 from 100.
The use of this otherwise unknown numeral system has been seen as evidence that the North American rune stones are hoaxes.
Read more about this topic: Pentimal System