Runic mystery!

[malj1]

I worked out they are runes but have no idea how to read this. Brass 23.3mm 0.8mm thick.

[FosseWay]

Using the table you provided I get, starting from the top above the Z rune:

D T R O W U S J NG I F A

Given its form, I suspect the W is actually a TH (the vertical sticks up above the loop, which it never does on W). The S is a best guess; it's not that close to the S in the table but it's clearly not an I either, since that occurs later in the correct form. The J I have just guessed as being vaguely close to the form in the table.

So it could alternatively be:

D T R O TH U S J NG I F A

.... which doesn't tell me a right lot 

It could of course just be a random collection of runes.

As to use - various mystical/religious/magic groups and movements that draw their inspiration from Norse mythology have come and gone. Everything from Wicca and Ásatro (people who worship the Germanic gods) to various mystic groups to neo-Nazi groups (Nordiska Motståndsrörelsen - the Nordic Resistance Movement - uses the T rune a lot and it has come to be something of a loaded symbol in Scandinavia, rather like the double S rune in Germany). I don't think this has to do with the NMR or similar and I don't see how religious worship of the old gods in itself would require a token. So my very vague guess would be a token of a magician or mystic.

[malj1]

Very similar results to those that I got, I was pinning my hopes on you having some more insight into it! ...like for instance your useful comments on the W being possibly TH.

My only other thought: Could it read from right to left instead?


Just an aside. The question of the swastika is going through our state parliament at present to make it illegal here as someone in a country town has been flying the Nazi flag above their home.

[FosseWay]

I don't think runes were normally written right to left, but in practice I suspect they wrote however they felt like at the time. In any case, I can't make any more sense of it backwards than forwards!

Unfortunately there are several problems with interpreting runes if your starting point is a modern Scandinavian language. First, Old Norse is at least as incomprehensible to Swedes, Norwegians and Danes as Old English is to modern English speakers, even if the text has been transliterated into the modern Latin alphabet. If you're Icelandic you've got more chance. But then there are limitations to the runic alphabet which are similar to those of the (unpointed) Arabic alphabet - the available vowel symbols are far fewer than the number of actual vowel sounds, and some vowels seem to be regularly omitted. And then there is the problem with general omission of letters or illiterate spellings, and the possibility that the text is a name or some other non-standard word or phrase.