The tradition is recounted in the Edda. The god Odin would have come into possession of the science of runes and thus gained dominion over all of nature by drinking a potion in which, together with honey and the blood of the wise Kvasir, there had been mixed the powder resulting from the abrasion of the signs engraved on all the objects of nature itself.
The most probable hypothesis regarding the graphic origin of the runes (excluding the Greek transmission through the Goths and the Latin) is that those signs reached Northern Europe along with the alphabet in use among the northeastern peoples settled near the great lakes of northern Italy, from where they could have reached the Rhine basin (Marstrander).
BIBL.: V. KAUFFMANN, ANGELICA, *Balder, Mythus und Sage*, Straßburg 1902, pp. 177-203; F. Dornseiff, *Das Alphabet in Mystik und Magie*, Leipzig-Berlin 1922; C. Marstrander, in *Norsk Tidsskr. f. Sprogvid. i* (1928), p. 92; S. H. Arntz, *Handbuch der Runenkunde*, Halle 1935; id., *Die Runenschrift, ihre Geschichte und ihre Denkmäler*, 1935; id., *Die Runenschrift der Menschheit*, in *Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie*, 67 (1942), pp. 121-36; J. G. Février, *Hist. de l'écriture*, Paris 1948, pp. 501-517; C. Mastrelli, *L'Edda*, Florence 1951.