The origin of them is a bit murky. Some think they are modified from Raetic. Given that they were in a position to spread them further north.

I only realized this a while back actually, but the forms of the runes don't matter too much, other than that we need some way to represent them. I'm having trouble explaining my logic probably, but what I'm saying is that runes only look like that at all because they came about via carving, either into words, or as molded inlays on a weapon maybe.
Had they continued development and made contact with the diffusion of paper/vellum/papyrus technology, they would have surely changed form sort of like how Chinese characters did. I sometimes think of how they might look in flowing cursive.

As to their meanings there are plenty of inscriptions left in mostly understood languages - but the more esoteric meanings seem to be reconstructed or outright novel even, dating from the 19th-20th centuries even, so I tend to be wary of anyone asserting they know the meaning.
That said I do believe that words and symbols can have a magical effect.

Hmm, Futhark. I knew they were used for writing, but hadn't looked into the magic aspect, so I spent some time checking it out.
The thing is that the runes themselves are phonetic, sourced in some way from Greco-Italic scripts. It's an alphabet first and foremost, and actually not a prototype at all, whereas the Chinese characters from the other thread were primeval pictograms of which at least its arms and humans you could recognize by knowing a couple rules. Futhark doesn't have that, its associated semantics are conveyed through their given names and "rune poems" that exist separate from the symbol itself, they don't originate as ideograms.

Their usage as singular icons is largely made up, exaggerated or fabricated by bunk esotericists centuries afterwards, about as credible as pre-decipherment interpretations of hieroglyphs. Quoting from the introduction to pic:
>Moreover, sometimes it seems that a rune could stand as a logographic representation of the word denoted by its name, much as an m-rune, ᛗ, was used as a runic ideograph for its name mon ‘man (person)’ in some Old English manuscripts. Some inscriptions make sporadic use of such runic short-hand, although this is a fairly rare occurrence, and some modern interpreters have clearly made too much of this kind of abbreviation in recent times.
>Cryptographic writing, along with similar word or letter games, is widely attested in the medieval Scandinavian runic tradition (including even that of outposts such as Northern Britain) and usually seems to have no purpose other than a demonstration of cleverness (or emphasis). Yet romantic speculation, which has even been accompanied by a fair degree of pseudo-scholarship, has imbued many such runic inscriptions with an aura of magic and mystery of which they are largely undeserving.
This is an extremely charitable way to put it, there's others that bash it mercilessly.

And the combinations of runes that truly were magical may be closer in composition to something like the Chi-Rho and other Christograms:
>In fact later inscriptions also witness the development of a new series of apparently magical forms ([], [], etc.) which look as if they may originally have derived from certain kinds of decorative or cryptic runes. But there are several other parallels between classical amulet texts and magical spells and the early runic amuletic tradition, which leads to the suspicion that the entire Germanic amuletic tradition is ultimately dependent on Mediterranean models, much as the runic alphabet certainly was.
It's about the composition, not the icon itself. Some incantations featured in inscriptions are gibberish, like "gagaga," "tuwatuwa," or uhhhhhh
>ᚨᚨᚨᚨᚨᚨᚨᚨᛉᛉᛉᚾᚾ[ᚾ]ᛒᛗᚢᛏᛏᛏ᛬ᚨᛚᚢ᛬
>aaaaaaaazzznn[n]bmuttt:alu:
Yeah, that. It's legit, from the Lindholm amulet, you read it in its photographs.

The issue academics face is that to this day there appears to be an interdisciplinary mixup between people of different expertises and interests, since it's such a demanding field:
>Often what pass for expert interpretations of runic inscriptions turn out to be no more than educated guesses by specialists in medieval literature or archaeology.
>The traditional approach has also often proven too restricted in its horizon – few runologists seem to be interested in comparing runic texts with similar expressions from other epigraphic traditions.

After that the book consists of analyzing inscriptions of various types, but that's loooooong and I wanna go do other stuff.

>>2610
>"gagaga
I remember skimming over that one, a very old nordic carving right.
My interpretation of it is, since it's on a weapon, that it's onomatopoeia for laughter, since it sounds like a hearty laugh.

>>2608
>As to their meanings there are plenty of inscriptions left in mostly understood languages - but the more esoteric meanings seem to be reconstructed or outright novel even, dating from the 19th-20th centuries even, so I tend to be wary of anyone asserting they know the meaning.
Well, I meant the more basic ones. The two M-shaped things are quite interesting in how they're distinct from each other and how M is used today. M being "Man". I don't think that one is up to much interpretation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannaz
I never thought about the carving thing, but it makes sense. I don't really know much about this stuff, I just thought it was interesting to find some patterns or similarities and have people guess.

>>2611
Yeah, from a spear. Pic interprets it in the following way:
>The sequence ‘I erilaz of Asugisalaz, I am called Muha’ is followed by some sort of battle-cry: gagaga gin(n)u ga ‘many times ga’.
This is distinct from gægogæ, which later on references gagaga but is hypothesized to be a separate thing, meaning "password," "consent." Heh.

>>2613
Thanks for sharing the PDFs, I enjoy reading this kind of stuff before bed.