The Younger Futhark, also called Scandinavian runes, is a runic alphabet, a reduced form of the Elder Futhark, consisting of only 16 characters, in use from ca. 800 AD. The reduction, paradoxically, happened at the same time as phonetic changes led to a greater number of different phonemes in the spoken language, when Proto-Norse evolved into Old Norse.
Thus, the language included distinct sounds and minimal pairs which were not separate in writing. Also, since the writing custom avoided having the same rune twice in consecutive order, the spoken distinction between long and short vowels were not retained in writing, either. The only real reason for using the same rune consecutively, would be when it represented different sounds following each other, such as carving kunuur for the name Gunvor.
Famous quotes containing the word younger:
“One thing is certain the only thing that makes you younger or older is that nothing can happen that is different from what you expected and when that happens and it mostly does happen everything is different from what you expected then there is no difference between
being younger or older.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)