Inscriptions are found on artifacts including jewelry, amulets, plateware, tools, and weapons, as well as runestones, from the 1st to the 9th centuries.

In the following table, each rune is given with its common transliteration: þ corresponds to [θ] (unvoiced) or [ð] (voiced) (like the English digraph -th-).

The earliest known sequential listing of the alphabet dates to A.D. 400 and is found on the Kylver Stone in Gotland, [ᚠ] and [ᚹ] only partially inscribed but widely authenticated: Two instances of another early inscription were found on the two Vadstena and Mariedamm bracteates (6th century), showing the division in three ætts, with the positions of ï, p and o, d inverted compared to the Kylver stone: The Grumpan bracteate presents a listing from 500 which is identical to the one found on the previous bracteates but incomplete: The Elder Futhark runes are commonly believed to originate in the Old Italic scripts: either a North Italic variant (Etruscan or Rhaetic alphabets), or the Latin alphabet itself.

The angular shapes of the runes, presumably an adaptation to the incision in wood or metal, are not a Germanic innovation, but a property that is shared with other early alphabets, including the Old Italic ones (compare, for example, the Duenos inscription).

Perhaps an "eclectic" approach can yield the best results for the explanation of the origin of the runes: most shapes of the letters can be accounted for when deriving them from several distinct North Italic writing systems: The p rune has a parallel in the Camunic alphabet, while it has been argued that d derives from the shape of the letter san (= ś) in Lepontic where it seems to represent the sound /d/.

There are conflicting scholarly opinions regarding them: Of the 24 runes in the classical futhark row attested from 400AD (Kylver stone), ï, p[a] and ŋ[b] are unattested in the earliest inscriptions of c. 175 to 400, while e in this early period mostly takes a Π-shape,[citation needed] its M-shape () gaining prevalence only from the 5th century.

Early inscriptions also show horizontal strokes: these appear in the case of e (mentioned above), but also in t, l, ŋ and h. The general agreement dates the creation of the first runic alphabet to roughly the 1st century.

[7] 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[citation needed] 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, p. 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, p. 171 in the light of the very primitive nature of the earliest (2nd to 4th century) inscription corpus.

The phoneme acquired an r-like quality in Proto-Norse, usually transliterated with ʀ, and finally merged with r in Icelandic, rendering the rune superfluous as a letter.

The names come from the vocabulary of daily life and mythology, some trivial, some beneficent and some inauspicious: The following charts show the probable sound values of each rune based upon Proto-Germanic phonology.

They are usually short inscriptions on jewelry (bracteates, fibulae, belt buckles), utensils (combs, spinning whorls) or weapons (lance tips, seaxes) and were mostly found in graves or bogs.

Words frequently appearing in inscriptions on bracteates with possibly magical significance are alu, laþu and laukaz.

[14] The longest known inscription in the Elder Futhark, and one of the youngest, consists of some 200 characters, is found on the Eggjum stone, dated to the early 8th century, and may even contain a stanza of Old Norse poetry.

The Caistor-by-Norwich astragalus reading raïhan "deer" is notable as the oldest inscription of the British Isles, dating to 400, the very end of Roman Britain.

The oldest inscriptions (before 500) found on the Continent are divided into two groups, the area of the North Sea coast and Northern Germany (including parts of the Netherlands) associated with the Saxons and Frisians on one hand (part of the "North Germanic Koine"),[15] and loosely scattered finds from along the Oder to south-eastern Poland, as far as the Carpathian Mountains (e.g. the ring of Pietroassa in Romania), associated with East Germanic peoples.

[17][18] The precise numbers are debatable because of some suspected forgeries, and some disputed inscriptions (identification as "runes" vs. accidental scratches, simple ornaments or Latin letters).

[19] Elder Futhark inscriptions were rare, with very few active literati, in relation to the total population, at any time, so that knowledge of the runes was probably an actual "secret" throughout the Migration period.