LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Runes: Alphabets
built 661 days ago
Those who used them for magic took the supernatural powers of the runes seriously. As one Viking poet put it, "Let no man carve runes to cast a spell, save first he learns to read them well." While many in the upper classes could read and write runes, the Vikings called in a specialist when dealing with the talismanic properties of their alphabet. These experts, called Rune Masters, were specially trained to bring runes into play for divination and sorcery.
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The Hälsinge runes are named after the traditional province of Hälsingland in Sweden, where they were first noted in modern times. However, they were used in a considerably larger area, and they were used between the 10th and 12th centuries. The runes seem to be a simplification of the Swedish–Norwegian runes and lack vertical strokes, hence the name 'staveless.' They cover the same set of letters as the other Younger Futhark alphabets. This variant has no assigned Unicode range (as of Unicode 4.0).
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There were several different systems of runes. In Britain the earliest alphabet had 24 letters divided into three groups of eight. The groups were named after Norse deities: Freya, Hagal, and Tiu. The use of runes had died out by the fifteenth century as the Roman Catholic Church eclipsed paganism.
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In J. R. R. Tolkien's novel The Hobbit, the Anglo-Saxon runes are used on a map to emphasize its connection to the Dwarves. They were ... used in the initial drafts of The Lord of the Rings, but later were replaced by the Cirth rune-like alphabet invented by Tolkien.
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