Shield Maidens of Midgard -rune rows

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY RUNE ROWS

The World War II brought a different aspect to the use of rune symbols because the National Socialists adopted the new born Armanen runes and incorporated them in the state, military and scholar system symbols. The Armanen runes were created by an Austrian Guido List. He claimed that his18 characters were even older than the Elder Futhark. List dedicated himself to studying the runes and he was the founder of runic yoga which was further developed by his followers. His rune row was rather rigid - while the runes of the past had had sharp angles for easy carving, his were to be carefully and perfectly made so that their shape would be a reflection of the 'frozen light', a pattern that he had found in his runes. All of his runes could be projected by shining the light through a hexagonal crystal under certain angles. Rune Hagal is so-called 'mother-rune' because its shape represents that hexagonal crystal.
As a part of the revival of northern ways and the rune knowledge that took part in the last few decades of the twentieth century, there have also appeared some modern runic alphabets, The Dragon's Runes, for instance- these are used by certain groups, and they are related to their specific teachings. But of all the new-age runic alphabets, we should mention the ones invented by J. R. R. Tolkien, because he contributed a great deal in revitalizing somewhat forgotten legends, and popularizing again the appropriate morals, teachings and costumes, removing the stigma which the ignorance of the world used to cover the ancient symbols and beliefs connecting it tightly and only to National- socialist ideology (which in fact did use in a certain way Germanic heritage, including the symbols - a logical move in the time following the nationalist movements in the art and music all over the Europe, when the consciousness of belonging to one's nation was in its full growth). But that same ignorance had obviously forgotten the long and till 1940's uninterrupted history of the rune development and the great influence of the legends in some of the most important works of art through centuries, starting from the old epic poem Beowulf, the famous Eddas, through the great national operas of Wagner, till the Tolkien's entire opus, including his development of elvish languages and alphabets, derived from the elder futhark as shown below.
Here is an example of how he had developed Tengwar - one of his earliest written forms into the alphabet Cirth, used at first for Sindarin language of Grey elves. Cirth means 'Rune' on Sindarin, and the signs look almost the same as the runes. They even fulfill the same role - they are used as a divination system and they are easily carved, wherefore they consist of straight lines. Meanwhile, Tengwar is still mainly used for writing with pen or brush. Each of these written forms were accepted and rearranged to fulfill particular needs of their languages by many races, which makes the runes in these fantastic worlds equivalents to writings in roman alphabet in the western world today - the main form of the written communication.

ARMANEN RUNES
rune	name	sound	meaning
	fa	f	primal fire
	ur	u	eternity
	dorn/thor	th	thunder
	os	o	mouth
	rit/reith	r	ritual/right order
	ka	k	Arian tribal tree
	hagal	h	enclosure
	not/nuath	n	karma
	is	i	ego/control
	ar/ar-yans	a	nobility
	sig/sol	s	sun power
	tyr	t	rebirth of sun-god
	bar/beor	b	birth
	laf/lagu	l	orlog/primal law
	man/mon	m	human/birth
	yr/eur	i/y	(rain)bow/death
	eh	e	love/duality
	gibor/ge	g	gift