The Elder Futhark is the runic character set with which most people are familiar. It is composed of twenty four staves, arranged into three Aetts. Just as our alphabet earns its name from the first few characters in it, the word Futhark derives from the phonetic values of the first six characters in this set. Each of the runes has a phonetic value, a literal meaning, and a metaphorical concept that arose from how the Germanic peoples viewed the subject of that rune. The only historical information about the spiritual meaning of the runes can be found in the three surviving rune poems, the Anglo Saxon, the Norwegian, and the Icelandic.poems, the Anglo Saxon, the Norwegian, and the Icelandic.
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