Can someone identify these runes? Are they genuine? (Hiking near Externsteine in Teutoburg Forest, Germany)

by iLikeTurtles420x

Hi Reddit,

Full album of pictures here: https://imgur.com/a/LcvisDX

today I was hiking near the “Externsteine” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externsteine) in the Teutoburg Forest. In the forest there are some more giant boulders, that are not part of the famous formation. On the backside of one of those stones I found these runes. Can anyone here tell me if they are genuine or if this is something that was done way later? (I fear it’s the second…)

The Externsteine are a magnet for all sort of weird people and cults. The Nazis tried to make the Externsteine into some sort of cult place, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the runes aren’t “real”. Im curious nevertheless :)

Platypuskeeper

Nope, those are recent. They're not in e.g. The German runic inscription database runesdb (which, while no means complete, would not miss a Migration Period stone inscription in Germany) The use of runes (natively) in Germany was limited more or less to that period, and they used the Elder Futhark set of runes.

Besides that, straight off they're too fresh looking and not nearly as weathered as actual inscriptions from 1500 years ago. Compare to this photo I took out in the field a few weeks ago; that's an inscription from the mid-late 1000s and was last completely cleaned and painted in around 1942. And it's in granite, which is pretty hard stuff. But it's still barely visible (and a nearby one was mossed over completely).

Anyway, runic inscriptions weren't normally written vertically but right-to-left or left-to-right (or both, boustrophedonically), and had guide-lines on the top and bottom of the runes. These don't seem to form any words, in any direction though. Most of the asymmetric runes appear to be facing the appropriate direction for left-to-right reading.

Some of the runes didn't exist in the Elder Futhark; ᛅ, ᛋ and ᚼ are Younger Futhark runes. (the first could be a right-to-left ᚾ, which did exist in the EF. The latter could also be ᛡ , the Anglo-Saxon form of the 'j' rune). ᛇ is an Elder Futhark (only) rune but one that is rare and whose actual sound value isn't known. (it's transliterated ï though) The ᛦ rune didn't occur in word-initial positions. The figure-8 shaped thing isn't an actual rune at all, maybe a miscarved ᛟ (unless it's some rare variant I haven't seen of it) "ᛨ" exists as medieval Icelandic form of the 'y' rune (a good 600-1100 years after the Elder Futhark was in use) ᛯ (if that's what we have here') is also a medieval Scandinavian (1100-1500) calendar rune without sound value.

Anyway, it seems to be something like this:

||||||| ---|---|---|---|---|----|---- [leaf?] | ᚨ (mirrored) | ᚼ | ᛦ | ᛒ | ᛦ ᛗ | ᚱ | ᚾ | ᛋ | ᛇ | ᛅ ᚦ | ᛯ? | ᛚ | ᛨ | ᛘ | ᛟ?

And transliterates to something like:

?ahzbz

mrnsïn

þ?lymo

Whether reading horizontally or vertically it doesn't make much sense, even taking into account the various possibilities opened up by the fact that they're apparently mixing runes from different futharks.

Probably some confused neo-pagan types; they continue the same esoteric ideas about runes that flourished in the early 20th century which the Nazis embraced (and indeed a lot of today's Neo-Nazis indulge in the esoteric ideas of today's Neo-Pagans) Today's academic runologists are far more skeptical of the idea that runes were inherently magical and deeply symbolic and whatnot.