OLD NORSE: DYRGIR OK VINIR. IN NORWEGIAN: DYR OG VENNER. Runes are not a language, but an alphabet – the Old Germanic alphabet. Each sign represented a sound. Runes were developed around the birth of Christ, probably in Scandinavia. By the year 500 they were being used by Germanic peoples from the Black Sea in the south to Norway and England in the north. Scandinavia has several thousand stones with runic inscriptions from the Viking Age, but there is less evidence of runes from earlier times. In total, only about 30 rune stones have been found in Norway that are believed to date back to the Roman Iron Age and the Migration Period (up until around 550CE) Futhark is a collective term for runic alphabets used in Germanic languages, most famously by the ancient Norse. Futhark refers to the first six letters of the alphabet: F, U, Th, A, R, K. There are two main types: Elder Futhark, with 24 runes, and Younger Futhark, with 16 runes.