The orthography of the Old Norse language was diverse, being written in both Runic and Latin alphabets, with many spelling conventions, variant letterforms, and unique letters and signs.
The first appearance of an ancestral stage of Old Norse in a written runic form dates back to c. AD 200–300[1] (with the Øvre Stabu spearhead traditionally dated to the late 2nd century), at this time still showing an archaic language form (similar to reconstructed Proto-Germanic) termed Proto-Norse.
Studies of remaining rune stones from the Viking Age reveal many nuances about the spoken language, such as the constant use of alliteration.
In general usage, an orthographic distinction of phones or phonemes is not necessarily held by every writer.
For example, an author may only distinguish some vowels by length, and orthographic devices could be mixed and matched.
Legend: The low/low-mid vowels may be indicated differently: Dialect-specific sounds: When dialectal mergers such as OEN monophthongization took place, regional spelling often changed to reflect this.
The original Icelandic manuscripts, which are the main source of knowledge of Norse mythology, did not employ a unified system of spelling.
Another complication is that several shortcut forms for common words, syllables, and grammatical endings developed.
The degree of normalization may vary, but in general the text is at the end reduced to limited deviation from a regularized system, perhaps at the expense of some dialectal character.
The main differences are the diphthong æi instead of ei as in stæinn ("stone") and i instead of the glide j as in giald ("payment").
In this standard, the u-umlauted a represented by ǫ is not usually considered, but rendered as the underlying a, as in the name Anundʀ.
However, even if they render the transcription according to the local pronunciation, the Rundata project presents personal names according to the previously mentioned standardized spelling in English translations.
Old Norse ø corresponds in modern Icelandic to ö, as in sökkva, or to e, as in gera.