Gondolinic Runes

The Gondolinic Runes were a writing system used in Gondolin. They were created by J.R.R. Tolkien between 1920-1925, when he was devising the first writing systems for his Elvish languages. They were the first runic system invented by him, and one of the few alphabets including lower case letters. Like the Gnomic Letters, this early writing system was never used.

The only possible glimpse of these runes used within the legendarium is in The Hobbit: Glamdring and Orcrist, famous swords from Gondolin, had runes that even Gandalf was unable to read, but Elrond (who knew of all types of runes) could. However it is clear that Tolkien did not consider using these letters in his writings, as in 1960, while rewriting The Hobbit, he found another explanation of why Gandalf could not read the runes: Glamdring was covered in dark blood when Gandalf found it, explaining why the runes were unreadable until cleaned by Elrond.