For k = 1,2,... let $H_k$ denote the harmonic number ${\sum }_{j=1}^{k}1/j$. In this paper we establish some new congruences involving harmonic numbers. For example, we show that for any prime p > 3 we have ${\sum }_{k=1}^{p-1}\left(H_k\right)/\left(k{2}^k\right)\equiv 7/24p{B}_{p-3}\left(modp²\right)$, ${\sum }_{k=1}^{p-1}\left(H_{k,2}\right)/\left(k{2}^k\right)\equiv -3/8B_{p-3}\left(modp\right)$, and ${\sum }_{k=1}^{p-1}\left(H{²}_{k,2n}\right)/\left(k^{2n}\right)\equiv (\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{6n+1}{2n-1}\right)+n)/(6n+1)p{B}_{p-1-6n}\left(modp²\right)$ for any positive integer n < (p-1)/6, where B₀,B₁,B₂,... are Bernoulli numbers, and $H_{k,m}:={\sum }_{j=1}^{k}1/\left(j^m\right)$.

The classical system of functional equations      $1/n{\sum }_{\nu =0}^{n-1}F((x+\nu )/n)=n^{-s}F\left(x\right)$ (n ∈ ℕ) with s ∈ ℂ, investigated for instance by Artin (1931), Yoder (1975), Kubert (1979), and Milnor (1983), is extended to      $1/n{\sum }_{\nu =0}^{n-1}F((x+\nu )/n)={\sum }_{d=1}^{\infty }{\lambda }_n\left(d\right)F\left(dx\right)$ (n ∈ ℕ) with complex valued sequences ${\lambda }_n$. This leads to new results on the periodic integrable and the aperiodic continuous solutions F:ℝ₊ → ℂ interrelating the theory of functional equations and the theory of arithmetic functions.

We present asymptotic representations for certain reciprocal sums of Fibonacci numbers and of Lucas numbers as a parameter tends to a critical value. As limiting cases of our results, we obtain Euler’s formulas for values of zeta functions.