Bluetooth wireless is named for Herald Bluetooth, the tenth-century king of Denmark and parts of Norway. Herald Bluetooth was a famous unifier, bringing the Danes under a single king. He inspired Jim Kardach, who happened to be reading Frans Gunnar Bengtsson’s novel, The Long Ships, about the Vikings and King Herald Bluetooth when he invented a system uniting mobile communications. The logo is a modern form of a Viking “bind rune" combining the Hagall and Bjarkan runes from the Younger Futhark.
A Futhark is, of course a Runic script named after spelling the first few runes in that script F-U-Þ (English Th sound)-A-R-K, just like Alphabet is derived from the first two letter in Ancient Greek in that script, Alpha and Beta. The Younger Futhark was the more common form of runic writing during the Viking Period across Scandinavia. Bind runes were a common way of drawing on and combining the magical properties of two different runes.
Herald/Harald Bluetooth (Old Norse: Haraldr 'blátǫnn' Gormsson ) was born c. 935. He reigned in Denmark c. 958 – c. 986 and in Norway c. 970 – c. 975/986. He died in c. 986 or 987. Some see him as a liberator and unifier, building kingdoms that would become nations, others see him as a ruthless tyrant who converted to Christianity and began ruthlessly imposing the new faith on his peoples, securing wealth and alliances at home and from Christian Europe.
