Runes on Screen: Six Mistakes Film, TV and Games Keep Making

Nothing says "ancient" on screen like a wall of runes. And nothing gets screenshotted, slowed down and mocked on the internet faster when they're wrong. Viewers pause. Players zoom in. Somebody always translates. Here are the six rune mistakes I see most often in film, TV and games, and how to avoid them.

1. Using the wrong rune row for the period

There isn't one runic alphabet. There are several, and they belong to different times and places. The Elder Futhark, with 24 runes, was used from roughly the 2nd to the 8th century. By the Viking Age it had been replaced in Scandinavia by the Younger Futhark, a slimmed-down row of just 16 runes. In England, the Anglo-Saxons used their own expanded row, the futhorc, which grew from around 26 to as many as 33 characters.

So a ninth-century Viking chieftain carving his name in the Elder Futhark is a bit like a Victorian character texting. If your story is set in the Viking Age, the Younger Futhark is usually the row your characters would actually have used.

2. Spelling modern English, letter by letter

Most on-screen runes are produced the same way: take an English word, swap each letter for a rune. The result is technically runic and practically nonsense. Runes were written by sound, in the language of the person carving them. The Elder Futhark has no separate letters for C, Q or X, because the people using it didn't need them.

The Younger Futhark goes further. With only 16 runes, one sign often covered several sounds: the same rune served for both T and D, another for both B and P. Real Viking-Age spelling looks strange to modern eyes precisely because it's working with a much smaller toolkit. That strangeness is texture you can use.

3. Writing a novel on a rock

Runes were not a book script. The surviving inscriptions are mostly short: an owner's name on a brooch, a maker's mark on a weapon, a memorial on a runestone. Even the everyday texts, like the hundreds of inscribed wooden sticks found at Bryggen in Bergen, are notes, prayers, name tags and business messages.

A character reading pages of runic prose from an ancient tome is pure fantasy. A character puzzling over a short, cryptic memorial carved on a stone is history, and far more atmospheric.

4. Inventing "magic meanings"

Rune magic is everywhere in popular culture, from tattoo flash to fortune-telling kits. Much of it is modern. There is no direct evidence that runes were used for divination in the way modern rune-casting suggests, and the most popular systems date from the 1980s onwards. One 1982 bestseller even popularised a "blank rune" that has no place in any historical rune row.

That doesn't mean runes had no power. Inscriptions include charms, curses and invocations, and the medieval sources are full of the uncanny. But if your plot hangs on a rune "meaning" something, make sure you know whether you're drawing on the Middle Ages or on the self-help aisle.

5. Forgetting direction and craft

Modern designers lay runes out like typed text: neat, evenly spaced, left to right. Early carvers were less obliging. Inscriptions can run left to right, right to left, or snake back and forth along a stone. Runes were cut with knives and chisels into wood, bone, metal and stone, which is why they're built from straight strokes and avoid curves.

A prop that looks carved, follows the grain of the material, and wraps around an object will read as authentic before anyone translates a word.

6. Treating "Norse" as one big costume box

The Viking Age covered roughly three centuries and a huge geography, from Dublin to Kyiv. Runes, language, religion and material culture all shifted across that time and space. Mixing an early Elder Futhark inscription, a later Christian runestone and a modern tattoo design in the same scene is the visual equivalent of dressing one character in a toga, chainmail and a tuxedo.

Getting it right isn't expensive

The fix for almost all of these is an hour or two with someone who reads runes for a living, early in production, before anything is carved, printed or rendered. It costs a fraction of a reshoot, and a lot less than a viral thread about your mistakes.

If you're putting runes on screen, on a prop or in a game, get in touch. You can also read more about our ancient language consulting and our work with game studios.