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Runes and Runic Inscriptions : Collected Essays on Anglo- Saxon and Viking Runes Page, R

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Runes and Runic Inscriptions : Collected Essays on Anglo- Saxon and Viking Runes Page, R Runes and Runic Inscriptions : Collected Essays On Anglo- Saxon and Viking Runes Page, R. I.; Parsons, David Boydell & Brewer Ltd. 0851155995 9780851155999 9780585165110 English Inscriptions, Runic, Inscriptions, Runic--Great Britain, Inscriptions, Runic--Isle of Man, Inscriptions, English (Old) , Runes. 1998 PD2014.P34 1998eb 430 Inscriptions, Runic, Inscriptions, Runic--Great Britain, Inscriptions, Runic--Isle of Man, Inscriptions, English (Old) , Runes. Runes and Runic Inscriptions Collected Essays on Anglo-Saxon aAnd Viking Runes Runes and Runic Inscriptions Collected Essays on Anglo-Saxon and Viking Runes R.I.Page Edited By David Parsons With a Bibliography By Carl T. Berkhout THE BOYDELL PRESS © R.I.Page, 1995 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 1995 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge Reprinted in hardback and paperback 1998 Reprinted in paperback 1999 ISBN 0 85115 387 9 hardback ISBN 0 85115 599 5 paperback The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14604-4126, USA website:http://www.boydell.co.uk A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Catalog Card Number:95-5825 This publication is printed on acid-free paper Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Contents Foreword vii Preface ix References and Abbreviations xii Quondam et Futurus (1994) 1 Northumbrian fter (=in memory of) + Accusative (1958) 17 An Early Drawing of the Ruthwell Cross (1959) 23 Language and Dating in Old English Incriptions (1959) 29 The Bewcastle Cross (1960) 47 The Old English Runeear (1961) 71 A Note on the Transliteration of Old English Runic Inscriptions (1962) 87 The Use of Double Runes in Old English Inscriptions (1962) 95 Anglo-Saxon Runes and Magic (1964) 105 Ralph Thoresby's Runic Coins (1965) 127 The Old English Rune eoh, ih 'Yew-tree' (1968) 133 The Runic Solidus of Schweindorf, Ostfriesland, and Related Runic Solidi (1968) 145 Runes and Non-Runes (1969) 161 How Long Did the Scandinavian Language Survive in England? The Epigraphical Evidence (1971) 181 Anglo-Saxon Texts in Early Modern Transcripts: 1. The Anglo-Saxon Runic Poem (1973) 197 Some Thoughts on Manx Runes (1980) 207 The Manx Rune-Stones (1983) 225 On the Transliteration of English Runes (1984) 245 New Runic Finds in England (1987) 275 A Sixteenth-Century Runic Manuscript (1987) 289 Runeukyndige Risteres Skriblerier: The English Evidence (1987) 295 Roman and Runic on St Cuthbert's Coffin (1989) 315 Dating Old English Inscriptions: The Limits of Inference (1990) 327 The Published Writings of R.I.Page to 1994 339 Foreword Dear Ray, Many people have contributed to this book. Simon Keynes from your former Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic in the University of Cambridge first approached the publishers with a suggestion for reprinting your Opuscula Runologica. Carl Berkhout has been meticulous in producing a comprehensive bibliography of your works including frivolities which you forgot you had ever written, reviews which spoke the truth in love, articles which demonstrate the depth and breadth of your scholarship, books which show your willingness to bring that scholarship to the wider world of the general reader. David Parsons has re-typed your work with scholarly precision, taking an editor's role in re- shaping conventions originally dictated by variety of requirement in different journals, and imposing as far as possible consistency of presentation throughout. But the work remains your own. We are grateful to you not only for the original articles but for all the time and thought you have given this last year to updating them, bringing new finds to bear on earlier discussion and conclusion. We know that you would not accept a festschrift. We approve both the decision and its rationale. But we hope that you will gain pleasure from this volume, not merely because of the quality and quantity of its scholarship, but also because it represents an international recognition of you as scholar, in one specific and significant field. We know your range has been wider than this, and we could equally have produced a collection of your work on glosses or on manuscripts. We know that you have had other roles, and that the help you have given to hundreds of scholars in your capacity as Librarian of the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, has been given unstintingly in spite of the time taken from your own work. We simply single out here what seems to us one of your major contributions to Anglo-Saxon and Norse studies in the twentieth century and as we offer it to you we also thank you with warm appreciation for having, in the first place, given it to us. I sign this as a representative of those friends, colleagues and Persons whose wish it was to give you this seventieth birthday present, no small token of their affection and esteem. May 1995 Preface Professor R. I. Page has been working on runes, though not exclusively on runes, for most of his academic life. He began the compilation of the corpus of Anglo-Saxon runic inscriptions for his Ph.D. thesis, and had already published the important 1958 and 1959 articles reproduced in this volume even before his thesis was presented. His books on runes, one in print, the other regrettably not, are two indispensable tools for anyone teaching Anglo-Saxon epigraphy. This volume will provide the third. The corpus which needs updating in view of the many recent finds, is a publication to which we confidently look forward as the fourth. Most of the articles in this book deal with Anglo-Saxon runes, but Page, expert in Old Norse as well as Old English, in Norse runes as well as Anglo-Saxon ones, is also an authority on the Norse runes of the British Isles. Two of the articles in this volume (1980 and 1983) deal with Norse runes in the Isle of Man, and next year we anticipate the publication by Page, together with Professors Michael Barnes and Jan Ragnar Hagland, of the Dublin runes. It is many years since Page described himself as a sceptical rather than a romantic runologist. The recent terrifying increase of fantasy writings and cults in which runes of power flourish like green bay trees has increased also the need for scholarship and teaching in genuine runic studies, if real knowledge of the real subject is not to disappear without trace in a world where educational management puts popularity of courses above academic value. Whether Page will be more fortunate than Cnut in turning back tides remains to be seen. It is also many years since D. M. Wilson (Sir David Wilson in private life) defined the first and second laws ofruno-dynamics:the first that for every runic inscription there shall be as many interpretations as there are interpreters; the second that if you don't understand it it must be magic. Page's ability to look at evidence with a clear eye unclouded by presumptions and prejudices, to demonstrate flaws in interpretations based on assumption rather than argument, are the qualities which have brought runic scholarship in the twentieth century out of disrepute and wild imaginings. His insistence on the importance of 'field runology', of examining and understanding relationships between artefact and text, has also significantly increased the rigour of a discipline, too easily confined to 'desk runology'. The twenty-three articles printed here span thirty-seven years. The collection is introduced by a new paper from Professor Page where he brings us up-to-date news of runic finds and applies up-to-date wisdom in matters of recent controversy. The remaining articles follow in the chronological order of their original publication. One,'Runeukyndige risteres skriblerier:the English Evidence', appears here for the first time. Full details of the original publications of the others will be found in the list of Page's published writings at the end of the book. This list being a substantial one, the papers here reprinted are there signalled by an asterisk. To most of these papers Page has appended a postscript discussing evidence that has come to light and/or opinion that has been expressed in the years since he first wrote them. In addition some few observations and references have been added in square brackets to the notes and, very occasionally, minor corrections have been silently introduced to the text. Some attempt has been made to impose consistency of layout and bibliographical reference on this collection where the original publications conformed, of course, to the varying requirements of various journals, but it has not been our aim totally to update the texts in every respect. Readers should note one deliberate 'inconsistency'. Until 1984 Page transliterated Anglo-Saxon runes according to the system devised by Bruce Dickins. In his article of that year 'On the Transliteration of English Runes' he defined a modified version of Dickins's system which he has subsequently used. We have great pleasure in recording our debts to the various people who have supported this publication. Specifically we acknowledge permission to reprint and good wishes from: The Society for Medieval Archaeology (three articles from Medieval Archaeology,1959,1968 and 1984);
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