A Tentative Study of Formative Style in the Elder Futhark: The Relationship between Visual Representation and Meaning Generation

English translation of the Japanese original published at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20257062 Building on the companion paper A Tentative Study of Symmetry in the Elder Futhark: A Proposal for a Twelve-Pair Structure, this paper discusses the formative style of the twenty-four runes of the Elder Futhark and the structure of meaning generation. It involves a greater degree of speculation than the companion paper, presenting a series of hypotheses as an interpretive model based on the correspondence between current standard letterforms and transmitted meanings. The main points are as follows. First, the runes can be read as taking vertical lines and diagonal lines in two directions as their basic constituent elements; vertical lines are interpreted as symbolizing stillness, while diagonal lines are interpreted as symbolizing motion. Of the twenty-four runes, eighteen contain vertical lines, while six do not. Second, the triangle can be read as an image symbolizing human beings, and the rhombus as an image symbolizing completion, attainment, and purpose. Third, three primary stylistic modes can be discerned in the formation of the runes: combination, doubling, and enclosure. Fourth, Tiwaz and Algiz possess basic images without vertical lines, and a nested structure can be discerned in which these images are incorporated as constituent elements of other runes. Fifth, reconstructions of the original forms of Eihwaz and Dagaz are attempted, suggesting that the vertical lines on both sides of Dagaz may have been added to differentiate it from Gebo. Sixth, the meanings of the runes possess a two-layer structure of individual meaning and relational meaning, and this paper proposes the possibility that the pair structure itself functions as a site of meaning generation. Although each hypothesis presented here is speculative when considered in isolation, reading them together as a mutually related interpretive model offers one way of understanding the runes as a compositional system that generates complex meanings from a small set of basic elements.