Rune, any of the characters within an early germanic writing system. The runic alphabet, also called futhark, is attested in northern europe, britain, scandinavia, and iceland from about the 3rd century … Runic inscriptions have been found throughout europe from the balkans to germany, scandinavia and the british isles.

Runes were primarily used to represent a sound value (a phoneme) … The meaning of rune is any of the characters of any of several alphabets used by the germanic peoples from about the 3rd to the 13th centuries.