Date and purpose of invention

The general agreement dates the creation of the first runic alphabet to roughly the 1st century. Early estimates include the 1st century BC,^[8] and late estimates push the date into the 2nd century. The question is one of estimating the "findless" period separating the script's creation from the Vimose finds of ca. 160. If either ï or z indeed derive from Latin Y or Z, as suggested by Odenstedt, the first century BC is ruled out, because these letters were only introduced into the Latin alphabet during the reign of Augustus.

Other scholars are content to assume a findless period of a few decades, pushing the date into the early 2nd century (Askeberg 1944:77, c.f. Odenstedt 1990:168). Pedersen (and with him Odenstedt) suggests a period of development of about a century to account for their assumed derivation of the shapes of þ and j from Latin D and G.

The invention of the script has been ascribed to a single person (Moltke 1976:53) or a group of people who had come into contact with Roman culture, maybe as mercenaries in the Roman army, or as merchants. The script was clearly designed for epigraphic purposes, but opinions differ in stressing either magical, practical or simply playful (graffiti) aspects. Bæksted (1952:134) concludes that in its earliest stage, the runic script was an "artificial, playful, not really needed imitation of the Roman script", much like the Germanic bracteates were directly influenced by Roman currency, a view that is accepted by Odenstedt (1990:171) in the light of the very primitive nature of the earliest (2nd to 4th century) inscription corpus.

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