On one line, 52 weeks of 7 days were laid out using 52 repetitions of the first seven runes of the
Younger Futhark. The runes corresponding to each
weekday varied from year to year. On another line, many of the days were marked with one of 19 symbols representing the 19
Golden numbers, for the years of the
Metonic cycle. In early calendars, each of the 19 years in the cycle was represented by a rune; the first 16 were the 16 runes of the Younger Futhark, plus three special runes improvised for the remaining three years: (
árlaug; Golden Number 17), (
tvímaðr; Golden Number 18), and (
belgþórr; Golden Number 19). In 1636,
Ole Worm documented the Younger Futhark numeral system, including these three characters, in his
Runir seu Danica literatura antiquissima (
Runes: the oldest Danish literature). The new moon would always fall on the day with the same number as the year of the cycle. For example, in the 18th year of the cycle, the new moons would fall on all the dates marked with
tvímaðr, the symbol for year 18. Later calendars used
Pentadic numerals for the values 1–19. A version using the
Latin alphabet for weekdays and
Arabic numerals for the golden numbers
was printed in 1498 as part of the
Breviarium Scarense. ==Primstav==