ᛤ

Cealc

chalk; a doubled variant of Calc

A variant of a variant

Sound
kk /k/
Position
33
Group
Later and manuscript letters
Descended from
None. A late Anglo-Saxon addition
Unicode
U+16E4
Yes / No
No traditional answer survives

Upright

  • a duplicate
  • redundancy
  • a scribal artefact
  • emphasis
  • what exists only on paper

Across the scripts

—

No ancestor

Elder Futhark

A late addition with no Elder Futhark equivalent. These letters were added centuries after the original row.

—

No equivalent

Younger Futhark

Scandinavia never added a letter to its row. It solved the same problems by reduction and context, and later by dotting existing runes.

ᛤ

Cealc

Anglo-Saxon Futhorc

A doubled variant of Calc, appearing in manuscript rune-rows rather than in real inscriptions.

A doubled Calc

Cealc is Calc (ᛣ) with the branch structure doubled, and that is essentially the whole description.

It appears in manuscript rune-rows — the alphabet lists Anglo-Saxon and continental scribes compiled — and effectively nowhere else. There is no meaningful epigraphic record, no Rune Poem stanza, and no attested use in a running text.

The name is usually given as cealc, chalk, which overlaps with one of the proposed readings of Calc itself. Whether the two letters were meant to be distinguished by sound at all is unclear; some scholars treat Cealc as a variant form of Calc rather than a separate letter.

Why the Futhorc has no fixed count

This rune is a good illustration of why you will see the Anglo-Saxon row given as 29, 31, 33 or 34 depending on the source.

The 29 is solid: that is the Old English Rune Poem, a coherent set with a stanza each.

Everything past 29 depends on judgement. Which manuscript rune-rows do you count? Do you include letters that appear only in an alphabet list and never in a text? Is Cealc a distinct letter or a variant of Calc? Do you count Gar, which has a real if small use, alongside Cweorð, which effectively has none?

Different scholars answer differently and all of them are being reasonable. Anyone who tells you the Futhorc has exactly 33 runes is picking one of several defensible tallies without saying so.

This site lists 34 in order to show everything, and groups the last five separately for exactly this reason.

R. I. Page argued that several of the late Futhorc characters are antiquarian pseudo-runes, invented by scribes to complete an alphabet rather than used to write anything. Cealc is among the more vulnerable to that charge: it has no stanza, no independent etymology, and no attested use in a running text. Note that the same charge does not stick to its neighbours Calc and Gar, which are carved on the Ruthwell and Bewcastle crosses.

In reading

There is no traditional meaning and, unlike Calc, not even a contested etymology worth much.

If you want a reading, the honest one is redundancy: a thing that exists as a variant of something else, preserved because a copyist preserved it rather than because it was needed. Duplication. Emphasis without content. The extra item on a list.

Modern sources that assign Cealc a developed divinatory meaning are constructing it entirely. That is worth knowing before adopting one.

Frequently asked questions

Very little can be said. The name is usually given as cealc, chalk, which overlaps with one proposed reading of Calc. It appears in manuscript rune-rows and effectively nowhere else, has no Rune Poem stanza, and some scholars treat it as a variant form of Calc rather than a separate letter.

Because everything past 29 depends on judgement. The 29 is solid: that is the Rune Poem, with a stanza each. After that you have to decide which manuscript rune-rows to count, whether to include letters that never appear in a running text, and whether Cealc is distinct from Calc. Published counts of 29, 31, 33 and 34 are all defensible.

It is a real shape in real manuscripts. Whether it is a distinct letter or a scribal variant of Calc is unsettled, and it has no attested use in a running text. This site lists it in order to show everything, and groups it with the other manuscript letters rather than with the poem's 29.

Any meaning assigned to it is constructed. The honest reading is redundancy: a variant preserved because a copyist preserved it rather than because it was needed.

Anglo-Saxon Futhorc

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