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An isogloss is the geographical boundary of a certain linguistic feature, e.g. the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or use of some syntactic feature. Dialects are typically demarcated by whole bundles of isoglosses, e.g. the Benrath line that divides High German and Low German; or the La Spezia-Rimini Line which divides the eastern Romance languages from the western ones. Undoubtedly, the largest well-known isogloss is the Centum-Satem isogloss, which separates the Indo-European languages into two distinct genetic categories.
The runes were introduced to, or invented by, the Germanic peoples in the 1st or 2nd century. While at this time the Germanic language was certainly not at the Proto-Germanic stage any longer, it may still have been a continuum of dialects not yet clearly separated into the three branches of later centuries, viz. North Germanic, West Germanic and East Germanic. Most of the early runes from the Scandinavian countries are assumed to be in the Proto-Norse, the common ancestor language of the modern North Germanic languages. No distinction is made in surviving runic inscriptions between long and short vowels, although such a distinction was certainly present phonologically in the spoken languages of the time. Similarly, there are no signs for labiovelars in the Elder Futhark (such signs were introduced in both the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc and the Gothic alphabet as variants of p.
Thus, the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc has several runes peculiar unto itself to represent diphthongs unique to (or at least prevalent in) the Anglo-Saxon dialect. However, the fact that the younger Futhark has sixteen runes, while the Elder Futhark has twenty four, is not fully explained by the some six hundred years of sound changes that had occurred in the North Germanic language group.
The inscription on the Negau helmet dating to the 2nd century BC. This is in a northern Etruscan alphabet, but features a Germanic name, Harigast. The angular shapes of the runes are shared with most contemporary alphabets of the period used for carving in wood or stone. A peculiarity of the runic alphabet as compared to the Old Italic family is rather the absence of horizontal strokes. Runes were commonly carved on the edge of narrow pieces of wood. The primary grooves cut spanned the whole piece vertically, against the grain of the wood. This vertical characteristic also shared by other alphabets, such as the early form of the Latin alphabet used for the Duenos inscription. Another theory is that the runes originated directly from the Middle East, and are related to the Nabataean alphabet, a variant of the Phoenician alphabet.
The Elder Futhark, used for writing proto-Norse (urnordisk, urnordiska), consist of twenty-four runes, often arranged in three rows of eight. The earliest known full sequential listing of the alphabet dates from ca. 400 and is found on the Kylver Stone in Gotland. Reconstructed names in Proto-Germanic have been suggested for them, based on the names given for runes of the later alphabets in the rune poems and the names of the letters of the Gothic alphabet. The Futhorc are an extended alphabet, consisting of 29, and later even 33 characters. It was used probably from the 5th century onward. There are competing theories as to the origins of the Anglo-Saxon Fužorc. One theory proposes that it was developed in Frisia and later spread to England.
The most likely candidates for the origins of runic scripts are the 5th to 1st century B.C. Northern Italic alphabets, Lepontic, Rhaetic and Venetic, all closely related to each other and themselves descended from the Old Italic alphabet. These scripts bear a remarkable resemblance to the Futhark in many regards.
In a treatise called de inventione litterarum, preserved in 8th and 9th century manuscripts, mainly from the southern part of the Carolingian Empire (Alemannia, Bavaria), ascribed to Hrabanus Maurus, a runic alphabet consisting of a curious mixture of Elder Futhark with Anglo-Saxon Futhorc is recorded. The alphabet is traditionally called "Marcomannic runes", but it has no connection with the Marcomanni and is rather an attempt of Carolingian scholars to represent all letters of the Latin alphabets with runic equivalents.
The 8th century Orkhon script (sometimes called Old Turkic), and the related medieval Old Hungarian script are often called runes, but strictly speaking that term refers only to the Germanic alphabet.
The Younger Fužark, also called Scandinavian Fužark, is a reduced form of the Elder Futhark, consisting of only 16 characters. The reduction correlates with phonetic changes when Proto-Norse evolved into Old Norse. They are found in Scandinavia and Viking Age settlements abroad, probably in use from the 9th century onward. They are divided into long-branch (Danish) and short-twig (Swedish and Norwegian) runes. There are other varieties of the Younger Futhark, in particular the Edward-script which can be considered as a variant of the Dalecarlian runes. In total, about 380 objects dating from 15001910 have been found in the provinces of Dalarna, Gästrikland and Härjedalen.