>>5353
The body was too long. this is part 1.
I just have to mention Navigation, the tides and languages first, as the runes were developed from seamarks.
When you live in this Archipelago, where you needed to trade to survive the competition, but you also needed to know the tides.
The tides are like the human rush hour for the fishes, so if you fish on certain places when the archipelago is filled or emptied of water, you get a lot of fish.
The timing of the tides were important even in beach combing times, as the spring ebb leave sea life trapped, and the currents makes seashore angling futile or profitable depending the ebb on flow.
http://leadertec.com/tipsandtechniques/Tides_habitats.html
There are no traces of a priestly caste that understood the tides, and if there were, you would have needed to know the tides to reach them.
What they did was to count, as there are 7 days between spring flood and spring ebb, and 14 days between two spring floods, and 28 between two full moons.
Most of the places humans lived, knowing the timing of the moon, would not have been important, because it wasn't a common death sentence, over the ones that got it wrong.
Navigating the archipelago(skjær-gården=skerry-yard, skerry garden), is simple, as it's all based on imaginary lines from the boat to various day-marks.
You paddled, rowed or sailed so you(1), the bow or aft spear (2), and some day-mark (3), were all three point in one line. You then fared "with"(med) that day-mark until, you have some other day-mark on the left or right, at which point you reaim your boat so you fall in line with some other day-mark, until yet another day-mark comes up on your right or left hand, reaim the bow or stern spear, and so on until you have reached your goal.
Because you at all times are surrounded by the feature rich ice ice age landscape, finding natural features that can act as a daymark, wasn't really a problem, so
getting from A to B safely, was thus a question of remembering daymarks.
A landmark is some uniqe feature, that tells the sailor he is on the right way, while a seamark is man made, and conveys some message.
Creating landmarks is something N-europeans have spent a LOT of resources on, and since the locals had no need for them, they were created to attract commerce, if they did not double as day-marks,like so many church spires in N-Europe. (the church spires was also a huge sundial, giving the local time.)
A seamark can also be a landmark or a daymark, but it's always man made, and it always convey a message.
Again, the locals have no need for seamarks, as they have made themselves daymarks to avoid danger, point out good fishing banks, or the way to take to the local trading grounds.
Outsiders that come to trade, don't know the local daymarks, so if you were a trader, and the locals had put up directions and warnings in the form of sea-marks, they had shown that they were interested in trading.
Seamarks have this feature that they need to have the same message, no matter the direction you approach them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_mark
(This article is the first time I have seen the term daymark in English, btw.)
As seamarks were meant to be read by outsiders, any form of local language was pointless, like we see with daymarks, that the fishermen kept as private knowledge over rich fishing grounds in their scull-books. For the outsider it was just another rock, but if you had the skullbook, and had been pointed out the rock by your father, it pointed to some underwater feature, that made the fish gather there during specific tides.
All the Runes in the Old Futhark, share this sea-mark feature that they give the same message no matter the direction it is seen from. (no p or b,or M and W)
To sum up, the Archipelago had the evolutionary pressure to develop a common sign language, and to use this sign language to store private information.
Most of where the rest of humanity lived, communicating with the people you met wouldn't have been a problem, as the languages showed a dialect continuum, until radio, TV, and public schooling taught the central dialect to the border dwellers.
IF A,B,C,D lived on a line, A could talk to B, B with A and C, C with B an D, but A to C would be hard, while A to D would be impossible.
Once you started to trade with boats, breaking the dialect continuum become a problem, so you got an evolutionary pressure for a common language, like with Latin in the middle ages, or English today.
If they had some common language before the old Futhark, is impossible to say, because there are no written sources from the time.
Before writing there were no dictionaries to look up a word, and for the one living in the archipelago, finding and expert to ask, took hours if not days.
End part 1