Pseudo-runes

Pseudo-runes are letters that look like Germanic runes but are not true ancient runes. The term is mostly used of incised characters that are intended to imitate runes, often visually or symbolically, sometimes even with no linguistic content, but it can also be used to describe characters of other written languages which resemble runes, for example: Old Turkic script, Old Hungarian script, Old Italic scripts.

The term "pseudo-runes" has also been used for runes "invented" after the end of the period of runic epigraphy, used only in medieval manuscripts but not in inscriptions. It has also been used for unrelated historical scripts with an appearance similar to runes, and of modern Latin alphabet variants intended to be reminiscent of runic script.

Cipher runes are cipher systems used as a replacement of standard runes but which do have an intended reading. These are generally not called pseudo-runes but can fit the definition.

Compared to imitation runes, the term pseudo-rune has also been used by R. I. Page to refer to runic letters that only occur in manuscripts and are not attested in any extant runic inscription. Such runes include cweorð ᛢ, stan ᛥ, and ior ᛡ. The main variant shape of the rune gér is identical to ᛡ (with ᛄ being a secondary variant of ger), and should not be confused for ior when found epigraphically.^[1][2] The age of these "manuscript-only" runes overlaps with the period of runic inscriptions, e.g. cweorth and stan are both found in the 9th-century Codex Vindobonensis 795.

The view of calling manuscript-only runes "pseudo-runes" is not shared by historical or modern runologists, since runes are defined as characters for writing, not strictly for inscriptions,^[3] reflecting historical usage.

The main use of the term pseudo-rune is in reference to epigraphic inscriptions using letters that imitate the appearance of runes, but which cannot be read as runes.^[4] These are different from cryptic or magical runic inscriptions comprising a seemingly random jumble of runic letters, which cannot be interpreted by modern scholars, but can at least be read. In contrast, pseudo-runic inscriptions consist mostly of false letters (some pseudo-runes within a pseudo-runic inscription may coincidentally appear similar or identical to true runes), and so cannot be read at all, even nonsensically.^[5]

It has been suggested that pseudo-runic inscriptions were not made by specialist 'rune masters' as is thought to have been the case when carving traditional runic inscriptions, but were made by artisans who were largely ignorant of runes.^[6] According to Nowell Myres, pseudo-runes may have been "intended to impress the illiterate as having some arcane significance".^[7]

Hagal rune

Wendehorn rune

Of a different type are the pseudo-runes invented in the modern period, such as the unhistorical Armanen runes, or Armanen Futharkh, created by Guido von List in 1902 and later authors of Germanic mysticism (e.g. Gibor, Hagal, Wendehorn).^[8]

SS runes (German: SS-runen), or esoteric insignia of the Schutzstaffel, are rune-like symbols originally used by the German Nazi paramilitary organisation SS (Schutzstaffel) during World War II. They were inspired by Guido von List's Armanen runes (see above), which had been used by Nazis prior.

SS runes were mainly used decoratively as symbols and were not viable for writing, even if they sometimes were used in writing as ideograms.

• Left image – The so-called "Web of Wyrd", a modern day symbol first appearing in Helrunar: A Manual of Rune Magick (1993, Mandrake of Oxford), by German occultist Jan Fries.
• Right image – Logotype of Norwegian "dark/pagan folk" band Wardruna in the background during a concert, a example of a neopagan pseudo-bindrune symbol of the unconforming type.

In modern paganism, new age and neopagan witchcraft (among others), the practice of combining various historical runes (mainly Elder runes), then under new made up meaning, and other rune-like symbols, into larger symbols of magical, symbolic or esoteric value, erroneously called "bindrunes", has become a thing. They oftem follow the principle of same stave runic (Swedish: samstavsrunor, "same stave runes"), were they are stacked on top of eachother so that a main vertical stave can connect them all, which is mainly done for aesthetic reasons. Other examples connect the runic staves in various unconventional ways, sometimes even with added aesthetic staves with no rhyme or reason.

Icelandic magical staves can be called a form of pseudo-rune due to them erroneously being called runes by some uneducated people due to their appearance and connection to Iceland.^[9]

The historical Old Turkic and Old Hungarian scripts, unrelated with the runes but similar in application (inscriptions etched in stone), have sometimes been referred to as pseudo-runes or pseudo-runic,^[10] or alternatively as "runiform".

• Bind runes
• Calendar runes
• House marks
• List of runestones
• Pseudo-Kufic – Imitations of Arabic in European Middle Ages and Renaissance art

• Myres, John Nowell Linton (1977), A Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Pottery of the Pagan Period, vol. 1, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9780521212854
• Page, Raymond Ian (2006) [1973], An Introduction to English Runes (2nd ed.), Boydell Press, ISBN 0-85115-946-X
• Page, Raymond Ian; Parsons, David (1995), Runes and Runic Inscriptions: Collected Essays on Anglo-Saxon and Viking Runes, Boydell & Brewer, ISBN 9780851155999
• Rumble, Alexander R. (2006), Writing And Texts in Anglo-Saxon England, D. S. Brewer, ISBN 9781843840909
• Wilson, David Raoul (1992), Anglo-Saxon Paganism, Taylor & Francis, ISBN 9780415018975