Runes, Runology and Runologists

LOOIJENGA/f2/1-26 5/16/03 5:28 PM Page 1 1 CHAPTER ONE RUNES, RUNOLOGY AND RUNOLOGISTS 1. Introduction This volume gathers nearly all older fuπark1 inscriptions dating from the period 150–700 AD found in Denmark, Germany, England, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Hungary, Bosnia, Rumania, Norway and Sweden. The book starts with essays on early runic writing and the historical and archaeological contexts of runic objects, and continues with a catalogue of the runic inscriptions found in the regions mentioned above. The inscriptions of Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Bosnia and Hungary have been listed together as the Continental Corpus.2 One find from Hungary and two finds from Rumania are listed among the Danish and Gothic Corpus. The catalogue gives datings, readings and interpretations, plus lim- ited graphic, orthographic and linguistic analyses of the inscriptions from the above mentioned corpora, complete with concise biblio- graphical references. This approach ensures that the most important data is presented with regard to the objects, contexts, runes and interpretations. In many cases the readings or interpretations (or both) are tentative and more or less speculative. There are several reasons—runes are vague, damaged or abraded, and sometimes illeg- ible. Of course one can conclude that an inscription is ‘uninter- pretable’, but I thought it wise to offer a few possibilities on which others can base further research or conjectures. The overall aim has been to provide the reader with a practical survey of the oldest inscriptions from the aforementioned areas, together with relevant archaeological and cultural-historical data. Within this framework there was no room for extensive linguistic considerations and exhaustive references to other interpretations, although information from various sources has been compiled in the catalogue. 1 Fuπark is the name of the runic alphabet, after the first six letters: f u π a r k. 2 This corpus is also known as South Germanic, but I prefer the term Continental. LOOIJENGA/f2/1-26 5/16/03 5:28 PM Page 2 2 The main issues are the origin and initial spread of runic knowledge, and the aims and use of early runic writing. My point of departure was the comparison of the earliest runic traditions in the countries around the North Sea (England, the Netherlands, and Denmark) and on the Continent, predominantly Germany. I chose not to focus on Scandinavia, as is more usual when studying the early runic traditions. This unorthodox approach stems from the hope that in this way some answers might be found to questions concerning the essence of runic script in the first few centuries AD. When focusing on the function of runic writing, one automatically has to ask why this special script was designed at all, and who first used it. It seems logical to look for the origins of runic script not in Scandinavia, but nearer the Roman limes. This point of view has been disputed, but it appeared interesting enough to warrant further investigation. I have therefore looked at the question of the first runographers and their social context. It is vital to take a fresh look at the contents of early runic inscriptions, and in fact a change of perspective has led to unexpected insights. 2. History of runic research Runic research began in Sweden and Denmark in the sixteenth century, initially under the influence of the then current Biblical views on history and culture. The first Swedish runologists were J. Buraeus (1568–1652) and the brothers Johan (1488–1544) and Olaus Magnus (1490–1557). A century later we find Olof Rudbeck (1630–1702), who in 1699 agreed with Johan Perinskiöld that runestones dated from the period just before the Flood, and that runes were invented by the Svea-Goths. Runes were thought to have been brought to Scandinavia by Magog, son of Japhet. In 1750 a book by Johan Göransson appeared which included 1173 drawings of runestones and proposed that the runes themselves were brought to the North in 2000 BC by a white man, namely Gomer, brother of Magog. Their example was the Hebrew alphabet, and the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans were held to have borrowed their letters from the six- teen Nordic runes. Thus the runes were not invented by a heathen, but by a pious Christian who was inspired by God. Benzelius suggested in 1724 that runes were derived from an old Ionian, i.e. LOOIJENGA/f2/1-26 5/16/03 5:28 PM Page 3 , 3 Greek, alphabet. Liljegren argued in 1832 that the runes were based on the Latin alphabet, a theory which still has supporters. The famous early-medieval abbot of Fulda, Hrabanus Maurus (822–842) coined the term ‘Markomannic runes’ (echoed by Wilhelm Grimm in 1821) to refer to runes that were actually Danish. Their argument that German runes were ‘indigenous’ or ‘aryan’ was revived again in the early twentieth century by Wilser. True scholarly work was actually begun by Ole Worm in 1651, with his book Runar sea Danica Literatura antiquissima, vulgo Gothica dicta. He looked at 49 Norse, 5 Gotlandic and 68 Danish inscriptions. Wormius argued that runes had emerged in Asia from the Hebrew alphabet, and Greek and Latin letters had sprung from the same source. He supposed runes to be much older than these latter alphabets. However, as early as the seventeenth century, there were scholars who recognized that most of the runestones dated from the Christian era. One of them was Celsius, who deciphered the stave- less runes in 1675. In seventeenth-century England, runological works by Worm, Resenius and the brothers Magnus became known alongside the Scandinavian Edda. It was a romantic era, in which Stonehenge was thought to have been erected by Vikings or Romans, and the pil- lars were assumed to be carved with runes. At this time most illeg- ible inscriptions, including those on gravestones, were thought to be runes. A grave marker from 1842 in the Brandon graveyard (Isle of Man) reads “And Thou, dark Runic stone! Who knoweth what thy voiceless silence hides... Thy legend undisclosed!” It was thought that England, Denmark and the Scandinavian peninsula were once one kingdom, peopled by Dacians, Goths, Vandals and Cimbrians. This realm was called The Runick Kingdom, and the inhabitants were Runians (see Fell 1991:201). Fell also refers to the English Romantic poets, who were very fond of the word ‘runic’, using it to express something extraordinarily mysterious. She notes approvingly that Byron used ‘runic’ only once, for something to rhyme with ‘Punic’ and ‘tunic’, in Don Juan (Fell 1991:202). In 1807, Nyrup started the first collection of Danish runestones in what later became the National Museum, in Copenhagen. Between 1866–1901 the Englishman George Stephens wrote his four-volume work The Old-Northern Runic Monuments of Scandinavia and England on the runes then known in Scandinavia and in England. The beauti- ful drawings of runic objects in his books are unsurpassed, but his LOOIJENGA/f2/1-26 5/16/03 5:28 PM Page 4 4 interpretations are seen as worthless now, due to his lack of accu- rate philological knowledge. In 1874, the Dane Ludvig Wimmer, the first modern runic scholar, published his work Runeskriftens oprindelse og utvikling i norden. He proved that all runic alphabets went back to one basic fuπark of 24 signs, which was known and used by all the Germanic tribes. These 24 letters were derived from the Latin capitals. In 1906, the Swede Otto Von Friesen claimed that the runes were derived from the Greek minuscule script of the third century AD. Scholars have argued the Latin or Greek origo theory without reaching consensus until the pre- sent day. In 1902, the German Sigmund Feist proposed a Venetian-Germanic origin for runes, influenced by Venetian, Celtic and Latin scripts. Venetian writing is a variety of the Etruscan alphabet, more specifically a North-Italic variety. His theory collapsed due to the incorrect datings he assumed for runic inscriptions. This underlines the impor- tance of archaeology as a supporting science for runology. The Norwegian linguist and Celticist Carl Marstrander also proposed a derivation of runes from a North-Italic variety of the Etruscan alphabet. Several archaic alphabets still existed at the beginning of the first century AD in north Italy and the Alps, all of which were varieties of the Etruscan alphabet. Graphically, these alphabets come close to the runic fuπark. The end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth saw many fantasts who were inspired by esoteric theories. It was suggested that runes originated from the lunar phases, i.e. from astrological quadrants and that they were based on a system of swastikas. The same idea seems to have been used by the writer of the ‘Frisian’ Oera Linda Bok (a nineteenth-century hoax), who derived a kind of runic script based on the spokes of a wheel, called ‘juul’. The beginning of the twentieth century also saw increasing interest in the alleged magical character of runes, especially by the Norwegian Magnus Olsen. In 1952, the Dane Anders Bæksted relegated the concept of magic in runic inscription to the realm of fantasy. This ushered in a new era of critical research in runological studies, which eventually resulted in a much more methodological approach. A more archaeological approach had already begun in the 1930s, when two German runologists, Wolfgang Krause and Helmut Arntz, published their runological handbooks in cooperation with the archae- LOOIJENGA/f2/1-26 5/16/03 5:28 PM Page 5 , 5 ologists Herbert Jankuhn and Helmut Zeiss. From that time it became usual practice to combine runology with archaeology.

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