9th century on the Sparlösa Runestone, which reads , meaning "And interpret the runes of divine origin". In the Poetic Edda poem , Stanza 80, the runes also are described as : The poem explains that the originator of the runes was the major deity, Odin. Stanza 138 describes how Odin received the runes through self-sacrifice: In stanza 139, Odin continues: In the Poetic Edda poem another origin is related of how the runic alphabet became known to humans. The poem relates how , identified as in the introduction, sired three sons— (slave), (freeman), and (noble)—by human women. These sons became the ancestors of the three classes of humans indicated by their names. When Jarl reached an age when he began to handle weapons and show other signs of nobility, returned and, having claimed him as a son, taught him the runes. In 1555, the exiled Swedish archbishop recorded a tradition that a man named had stolen three rune staffs from Odin and learned the runes and their magic. Runic alphabets Elder Futhark (2nd to 8th centuries) The Elder Futhark, used for writing Proto-Norse, consists of 24 runes that often are arranged in three groups of eight; each group is referred to as an Ætt (Old Norse, meaning 'clan, group'). The earliest known sequential listing of the full set of 24 runes dates to approximately AD 400 and is found on the Kylver Stone in Gotland, Sweden. Most probably each rune had a name, chosen to represent the sound of the rune itself. The names are, however, not directly attested for the Elder Futhark themselves. Germanic philologists reconstruct names in Proto-Germanic based on the names given for the runes in the later alphabets attested in the rune poems and the linked names of the letters of the Gothic alphabet. For example, the letter /a/ was named from the runic letter called Ansuz. An asterisk before the rune names means that they are unattested reconstructions. The 24 Elder Futhark runes are the following: Anglo-Saxon runes (5th to 11th centuries) The futhorc (sometimes written "fuþorc") are an extended alphabet, consisting of 29, and later 33 characters. It was probably used from the 5th century onwards. There are competing theories as to the origins of the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc. One theory proposes that it was developed in Frisia and later spread to England, while another holds that Scandinavians introduced runes to England, where the