BabelStone Fonts


BabelStone Runic Elder Futhark

Description

BabelStone Runic Elder Futhark is a Unicode Runic font covering the 24 runes of the Common Germanic fuþark, also known as the Elder Fuþark. This font also includes variant forms for most of these runes using unofficial variation sequences.

This font does not map runic glyphs to Latin letters like most fonts, but uses the special Runic characters defined in the Unicode Standard. See How to Input Unicode Ogham for suggestions on how to input Unicode characters (just substitute "Runic" for "Ogham" on that page).



Samples

BabelStone Runic Elder Futhark (24 points)



Character Repertoire

The tables below render each character using BabelStone Runic Elder Futhark, either using the font installed on your local machine or using WOFF fonts if the font is not installed on your local machine.

Variant glyph forms for most of the runes are accessible as unofficial variation sequences (which do not conform to the Unicode Standard), using VS2 through VS6 (VS1 can be used to explicitly access the default glyph). For example, the rounded variant of 16C3 is accessible as <16C3 FE01> (16C3 + VS1).


Runic [16A0..16FF]

Code Point Character Name Transcription Character Variants
VS2 VS3 VS4
16A0 RUNIC LETTER FEHU FEOH FE F f

ᚠ︁

16A2 RUNIC LETTER URUZ UR U u

ᚢ︁

ᚢ︂

ᚢ︃

16A6 RUNIC LETTER THURISAZ THURS THORN th

ᚦ︁

16A8 RUNIC LETTER ANSUZ A a

ᚨ︁

16B1 RUNIC LETTER RAIDO RAD REID R r

ᚱ︁

16B2 RUNIC LETTER KAUNA k

ᚲ︁

16B7 RUNIC LETTER GEBO GYFU G g

16B9 RUNIC LETTER WUNJO WYNN W w

ᚹ︁

16BA RUNIC LETTER HAGLAZ H h

ᚺ︁

ᚺ︂

ᚺ︃

16BE RUNIC LETTER NAUDIZ NYD NAUD N n

16C1 RUNIC LETTER ISAZ IS ISS I i

16C3 RUNIC LETTER JERAN J j

ᛃ︁

ᛃ︂

ᛃ︃

16C7 RUNIC LETTER IWAZ EOH ė

16C8 RUNIC LETTER PERTHO PEORTH P p

ᛈ︁

ᛈ︂

16C9 RUNIC LETTER ALGIZ EOLHX z

ᛉ︁

ᛉ︂

ᛉ︃

16CA RUNIC LETTER SOWILO S s

ᛊ︁

ᛊ︂

16CF RUNIC LETTER TIWAZ TIR TYR T t

16D2 RUNIC LETTER BERKANAN BEORC BJARKAN B ƀ

ᛒ︁

ᛒ︂

16D6 RUNIC LETTER EHWAZ EH E e

ᛖ︁

16D7 RUNIC LETTER MANNAZ MAN M m

ᛗ︁

16DA RUNIC LETTER LAUKAZ LAGU LOGR L l

ᛚ︁

16DC RUNIC LETTER INGWAZ ŋ

ᛜ︁

16DE RUNIC LETTER DAGAZ DAEG D đ

16DF RUNIC LETTER OTHALAN ETHEL O o

ᛟ︁

16EB RUNIC SINGLE PUNCTUATION

16EC RUNIC MULTIPLE PUNCTUATION

16ED RUNIC CROSS PUNCTUATION



Ligatures

The table below lists ZWJ ligatures for bind runes that are currently supported in this font. Additional ligatures will be added on request.


Ligature Code Points Glyph
A-Z 16A8 ZWJ 16C9

ᚨ‍ᛉ

G-A 16B7 ZWJ 16A8

ᚷ‍ᚨ

H-A 16BA ZWJ 16A8

ᚺ‍ᚨ

H-E 16BA ZWJ 16D6

ᚺ‍ᛖ

I-NG 16C1 ZWJ 16DC

ᛁ‍ᛜ

E-R 16D6 ZWJ 16B1

ᛖ‍ᚱ

E-M 16D6 ZWJ 16D7

ᛖ‍ᛗ



Mirrored Glyphs for Right-to-Left Text

Runic inscriptions mostly read left-to-right (LTR), but sometimes read right-to-left (RTL) or are sometimes written boustrophedon (left-to-right and right-to-left in alternate lines). Runic text set using BabelStone Elder Futhark can be displayed in right-to-left order with mirrored glyphs by putting U+202D (LEFT-TO-RIGHT OVERRIDE [RLO]) at the start of the text and putting U+202C (POP DIRECTIONAL FORMATTING [PDF]) at the end of the text (PDF is not required at the end of a line, as the directionality of the text is reset at a new line, but for the same reason RLO is required at the start of each line of RTL text). This works as expected in Firefox and Chrome browsers, but in IE11 and Edge browsers the text is reordered from right to left, but the mirrored glyphs are not used.


Drawing of the Kalleby Rune Stone in La Suède préhistorique (1874) by Oscar Montelius

‮ᚦᚱᚨᚹᛁᛃᚨᚾ ᚺᚨᛁᛏᛁᚾᚨᛉ ᚹᚨᛊ‬

<RLO> ÞRAWIJAN HAITINAZ WAS >PDF<

(ÞRAWIJAN ᚦᚱᚨᚹᛁᛃᚨᚾ should be read as ÞRAWIŊAN ᚦᚱᚨᚹᛁᛜᚨᚾ)

"Thrawingan was named"


In Firefox the above example is rendered as:



OpenType Features


Script Language Features Explanation
Runic <runr> Default <dflt> Glyph Composition Decomposition <ccmp> For producing ligatured "bind runes".
Right-to-Left Mirrored Forms <rtlm> Mirrored glyphs for right-to-left layout.


Version History

Version Date Notes
3.000 2018-02-11 Initial release
3.001 2018-02-11 Added three ligatures and additional variants
3.002 2018-02-15 Minor changes
3.003 2018-02-17 Fix ligatures; remove mirrored variants; add OpenType right-to-left mirrored forms.
3.004 2018-02-18 Add more ligatures
3.005 2022-03-14 Added 'Runr' tag for design languages and supported languages of the meta table.


Download

BabelStone Runic Elder Futhark is licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1, which means you are free to use it for personal or commercial purposes, and to redistribute it by itself or as part of a free or commercial software package, just as long as you do not sell the font on its own. The license also allows you to modify the font in any way you like, as long as the modified font does not use "BabelStone" in its name. Please read the license for details.

For use on your computer or mobile device please download and install the TTF file. The WOFF and WOFF2 files are for web use only, and are not required by most users.


A WOFF format web font version of BabelStone Runic Elder Futhark is available here.



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