Bind runes: what is attested, and what is new
A bind rune is two or more runes carved as one sign, and the old inscriptions really do hold them. What they spell there is words and names: Hadda on a bone plate, sefa on the Franks Casket, the Latin meus on a comb. That is writing, letters joined to save space or to sit better on the object. Composing a bind rune around an intention is the modern practice, and it is the one most people come looking for. Both layers are real, and this page keeps them apart.
Where this comes from
attested use ligatured runes in named inscriptions, the Franks Casket among them
The attested bind runes spell words and names. On the Undley bracteate the word gægogæ, on the Franks Casket sefa, on the Thornhill III stone gebiddaþ. On a Derbyshire bone plate the name Hadda, on the Whitby comb the Latin meus. On St Cuthbert’s coffin the names of the evangelists, and on an armband of the Galloway Hoard the name Ecgbeorht. The rhythm over time is attested too: ligatures appear in the Migration Age, grow rare in the Viking Age, and spread in the Middle Ages. Dates for the single objects are not given here, because the source we checked does not carry them. The age is named, not the century.
Composing under an intention
The modern way takes two or three runes and draws them as one sign around an intention. It is its own craft: choosing the runes, sketching the joined shape, carving or drawing it on wood, paper or skin. It belongs to the modern reading layer, the same one that holds reversed meanings and spreads. The attested bind runes spell words, and the sign built under an intention is a practice of our time. Both are in use, and neither is the other.
What the poems say
The poems describe the runes one at a time, and none of the four witnesses writes in bound signs. What each rune brings to a joined sign starts from what it means alone, gathered here rune by rune.
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