Kay's Guide to Runic Writing in HTTYD
Hi! Welcome to my slapped together guide to reading text in HTTYD.
The main section of legible text in the Book of Dragons and other written materials in the HTTYD movies uses a simplified form of Younger Futhark.
What is Younger Futhark?
Younger Futhark is a simplified and evolved form of Elder Futhark. YF appeared around the 9th century, and corresponded with the Viking Age. I've included the Runes source in a link with the first image if you wanna explore it for yourself.
The top row of runes (red) are specifically the Danish version of YF. The middle and bottom rows are Norwegian and Swedish. I've shown the HTTYD specific runes so you can see the changes made, which is mostly just using the same runes for multiple letters since they needed all 26. All the legible writing in the HTTYD movies are transliterated English, just using the runes instead of our known alphabet. This makes it pretty easy to learn to read and write it with a guide or some good memorization.
The letters M and L use the Swedish/Norwegian version of the runes. Why? I don't know. They also use ür for 5 different letters so I'm not questioning it.
If you see on the HTTYD runes list, there are two written for the letter H. As far as I've been able to see, the only time the second one has been used is for Night Fury in the Book of Dragons. I've assumes this is for stylistic choices, as it is not a H rune in any of the source lists used.
Below, we can see an example of the complex H rune in the name Thunderdrum. Its actually written Thunderdum here, and I'm assuming that since the handwriting is bad, that the character who wrote it spelled it wrong.
While I do believe that was simply spelled wrong, there are other places where a CK is combod as just a K like below in the Timberjack title.
While some of the text in these pages is legible, there are side/background paragraphs that, to my knowledge, are not. These side paragraphs appear to be written in Elder Futhark, or a version thereof, and are not written normally. Some paragraphs are backwards, and flipped runes, repeating 'words', and symbols i cant identify at all.
Take a look at this paragraph on the Whispering death. Using the Elder Futhark list, the first line reads zpl(th)izpdo. The only thing I can fathom this referencing is the word Zippleback but ehhhh. Its also flipped horizontally, as all of those runes are backwards. Granted, I can't actually read Old Norse, but some of the runes on the second line I can't find any reference to.
You should absolutely take all of this with knowing that I am most definitely not an expert in any of this, this is just a special interest I decided to finally write up on after first getting it together four years ago lol.
*If there is any additional information I find or put together, I will update this post with edit date timestamps*
Enjoy and write!
