Runology was initiated by
Johannes Bureus (1568–1652), who was interested in the linguistics of the
Geatish language (
Götiska språket), i.e.
Old Norse. However, he did not look at the runes as merely an alphabet, but rather something holy or magical. The study of runes was continued by
Olof Rudbeck the Elder (1630–1702) and presented in his collection
Atlantica. The
physicist Anders Celsius (1701–1744) further extended the science of runes and traveled around Sweden to examine the
bautastenar (
megaliths, today termed
runestones). Another early treatise is the 1732
Runologia by
Jón Ólafsson of Grunnavík. The sundry runic scripts were well understood by the 19th century, when their analysis became an integral part of the
Germanic philology and
historical linguistics.
Wilhelm Grimm published his
Über deutsche Runen in 1821, where among other things he dwelt upon the "
Marcomannic runes" (chapter 18, pp. 149–159). In 1828, he published a supplement, titled
Zur Literatur der Runen, where he discusses the
Abecedarium Nordmannicum.
Sveriges runinskrifter was published from 1900. The dedicated journal
Nytt om runer has been published by the "Runic Archives" of the Museum of Cultural History at the
University of Oslo from 1985. The
Rundata project, aiming at a machine-readable catalogue of runic inscriptions, was initiated in 1993. ==See also==