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ARunic calendar (alsoRune staff orRunic almanac) is aperpetual calendar, variants of which were used in Northern Europe until the 19th century. A typical runic calendar consisted of several horizontal lines of symbols, one above the other. Special days likesolstices,equinoxes, and celebrations (includingChristian holidays andfeasts) were marked with additional lines of symbols.
Runic calendars were written onparchment or carved ontostaves of wood, bone, or horn. The oldest one known, and the only one from theMiddle Ages, is a staff fromNyköping,Sweden, believed to date from the 13th century. Most of the several thousand which survive are wooden calendars dating from the 16th and the 17th centuries. During the 18th century, Runic calendars had a renaissance as antiques, and runic calendars dating from around 1800 were made in the form of brass tobacco boxes.
On one line, 52 weeks of 7 days were laid out using 52 repetitions of the first seven runes of theYounger Futhark. The runes corresponding to eachweekday varied from year to year.
On another line, many of the days were marked with one of 19 symbols representing the 19 Golden numbers, for the years of theMetonic cycle. In early calendars, each of the 19 years in the cycle was represented by a rune; the first 16 were the 16 runes of theYounger Futhark, plus three special runes improvised for the remaining three years. The new moon would fall on that day during that year of the cycle. For example, in the 18th year of the cycle, the new moons would fall on all the dates marked withtvimadur, the symbol for year 18. Later calendars usedPentadic numerals for the values 1–19.
| Arabic | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| Golden Numbers | ᚠ | ᚢ | ᚦ | ᚬ | ᚱ | ᚴ | ᚼ | ᚾ | ᛁ | ᛅ | ᛋ | ᛏ | ᛒ | ᛚ | ᛘ | ᛦ | ᛮ | ᛯ | ᛰ |
Because this system needed 19 runes to represent the 19 golden numbers which stood for the 19 years of the perpetual calendar's cycle, theYounger Futhark was insufficient, having only 16 characters. The solution devised was to add three special runes to represent the remaining numbers:
(arlaug; Golden Number 17),
(tvimadur ortvímaður; Golden Number 18), and
(belgthor; Golden Number 19). In 1636,Ole Worm documented the Younger Futhark numeral system, including these three characters, in hisRunir seu Danica literatura antiquissima (Runes: the oldest Danish literature).[1]
A version using theLatin alphabet for weekdays andArabic numerals for the golden numberswas printed in 1498 as part of theBreviarium Scarense.[2]
Aprimstav is the ancientNorwegian calendar stick. These were engraved with images instead of runes. The images depicted the different nonmoving religious holidays. The oldest primstav still in existence is from 1457 and is kept at theNational Museum of Denmark.[3]
Adherents of theEstonian ethnic religion (Maausk) have published Runic calendars (Estonian:sirvilauad) every year since 1978. Until 1991, the calendar was an illegalsamizdat publication under theSoviet government.[4]
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