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Staveless runes were the climax of the simplification process in the evolution ofrunic alphabets that had started when theElder Futhark was superseded by theYounger Futhark.[1] To create the staveless runes, vertical marks (or staves) were dropped from individual letters (or runes). The name "staveless" is not entirely accurate, since thei rune consists of a whole stave and thef,þ,k and thes runes consist of shortened main staves.[1]
Since their discovery onrunestones atHälsingland[1] in the 17th century, staveless runes have also been known as theHälsinge runes. This label is, however, misleading since staveless runes also appear inMedelpad,Södermanland, and theNorwegian town ofBergen.[1]
The staveless runes may appear hard to recognize at first glance, but the only difference between them and the precedingYounger Futhark is – in fact – their omission of main staves. If main staves are added, it is apparent that thea,n,t,l ands runes are identical to their staved predecessors.[2] Noą rune has been found in inscriptions, but it has been postulated that it was a mirrored form of theb rune due to pairings indicated in the staveless runes.[3]
It appears from the title page ofJohannes Bureus'runic primer that Bureus had some understanding of the staveless runes in 1611, but that this has been denied by virtually all runologists.[4] Since Bureus had not succeeded in deciphering the runes, a large poster with the image of two runestones with staveless runes was published in 1624 together with the announcement of a royal reward for the one who could decipher them.[5] It would, however, take half a century before someone found the solution.[5]
At the end of the 1660s,Athanasius Kircher, who was an interpreter ofhieroglyphs, studied the runes, but he arrived at the conclusion that the staveless runes were nothing but meaningless scribbles, and that the stones had been erected to protect against snakes.[5]
The verdict of the hieroglyph expert was too much for the mathematician, antiquarian and Hälsingland nativeMagnus Celsius. Celsius departed for Hälsingland in the early 1670s and made meticulous drawings of the runestones. When he was back in Stockholm, he worked hard on deciphering the runes but had to give up. Eventually he tried to add staves to the runes and suddenly deciphered some of the staveless runes. By 1674, he had deciphered all the runes except for theR rune, which he interpreted as a distinguishing mark.[5]
The following year, Celsius made a speech atUppsala University, where he made his discovery public. He started the process of publishing his discovery shortly after making the speech but died suddenly before the printing was finished.[5] However, the news of the discovery spread quickly among scholars and it was used as the basis of the claim thatstenography had originated in Sweden.[6] It would beOlof Celsius who finally published his father's discovery.[5]
The following runestones are some of those that feature staveless runes: