Runic Staves

Rune sticks are wooden sticks on which a calendar for the whole year is engraved (the so-called perpetual calendar, i.e. the same stick can be used for several years). They were used in Finland to keep track of time from the 13th century onwards. Their importance declined rapidly in the 1700s, when people began to use printed annual almanacs.

The Almanac Archive presents four different types of Finnish runes, from the oldest surviving one, dated 1566, to the most recent, dated 2012.

We would like to thank Anne Pöyhönen, Antti Metsänkylä, Arja Latvala-Oja, the National Board of Antiquities and the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève (Paris) for their help in making the almanac archive possible.

Read more about rune sticks in Anne Pöyhönen's article: Almanakkatoimiston riimusauva