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Texts & Contexts of the Oldest Runic Inscriptions www.RodnoVery.ru www.RodnoVery.ru TEXTS & CONTEXTS OF THE OLDEST RUNIC INSCRIPTIONS NW-4-looijenga.qxd 23/06/2003 13:17 Page 2 THE NORTHERN WORLD North Europe and the Baltic c. 400-1700 AD Peoples, Economies and Cultures EDITORS arbara rawford B www.RodnoVery.ruC (St. Andrews) David Kirby (London) Jon-Vidar Sigurdsson (Oslo) Ingvild Øye (Bergen) Przemyslaw Urbanczyk (Warsaw) VOLUME 4 NW-4-looijenga.qxd 23/06/2003 13:17 Page 3 TEXTS & CONTEXTS OF THE OLDEST RUNIC INSCRIPTIONS BY TINEKE LOOIJENGA www.RodnoVery.ru BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2003 NW-4-looijenga.qxd 23/06/2003 13:17 Page 4 Cover illustration: Hantum, whale ivory object with inscription: k:aha:, chapter nine, no. 15. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Looijenga, Tineke. Texts & contexts of the oldest Runic inscriptions / by Tineke Looijenga. p. cm. — (The northern world ; v. 4) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 90-04-12396-2 1. Inscriptions, Runic. 2. Runes—History. I. Title: Texts and contexts of the oldest Runic inscriptions. II. Title. III. Series. PD2013.L66 2003 430—dc21 2003051996 www.RodnoVery.ru rune font: johan nordlander, umeå ISSN 1569–1462 ISBN 90 04 12396 2 © Copyright 2003 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands LOOIJENGA/f1/v-xiii 6/12/03 11:03 AM Page v v “For omens and the casting of lots they have the highest regard. Their procedure in casting lots is always the same. They cut of a branch of a nut-bearing tree and slice it into strips; these they mark with different signs and throw them com- pletely at random onto a white cloth. Then the priest of the state, if the con- sultation is a public one, orwww.RodnoVery.ru the father of the family if it is private, offers a prayer to the gods, and looking up at the sky picks up three strips, one at a time, and reads their meaning from the signs previously scored on them.” C. Tacitus, GERMANIA X, (ed. Penguin Classics, transl. H. Mat- tingly/S.A. Handford, Middlesex, 1948). “Runar mont πu finna, ok raπna stafe, mjøk stora stafe, mjøk stinna stafe, es faπe fimbolπulr, ok gørπo ginnregen, ok reist røgna hroptr . .”. Hávamál, Edda, strophe 142 (Die Lieder der Edda, ed. B. Sijmons, Groningen, 1906). Translation: “Runes you will find, and readable staves, very strong staves, very stout staves, staves that Bolthor stained, made by mighty powers, graven by the prophetic God”. (The Elder Edda, transl. by Paul B. Taylor & W.H. Auden, London, 1969). This page intentionally left blank www.RodnoVery.ru LOOIJENGA/f1/v-xiii 6/12/03 11:03 AM Page vii vii CONTENTS List of abbreviations .................................................................. xi List of maps ................................................................................ xiii C O R, R R 1. Introduction ...................................................................... 1 2. History of runic research ................................................ 2 3. The fuπark and the rune names .................................... 5 4. The meaning of the word rune .................................... 7 5. Points of departurewww.RodnoVery.ru .......................................................... 8 6. England and the Netherlands ........................................ 11 7. Denmark .......................................................................... 12 8. The Continent ................................................................ 12 9. The Scandinavian peninsula .......................................... 13 10. Diagnostic runeforms ...................................................... 14 11. Methods ............................................................................ 15 12. Division into runic periods ............................................ 18 13. On the graphic rendering of runes, findspots, transliterations .................................................................. 21 14. Anomalous runes and doubtful cases ............................ 21 C T H, A R 1. Introduction ...................................................................... 27 2. From the pre-Roman Iron Age to the late-Germanic Iron Age .......................................................................... 30 3. The emergence of an elite ............................................ 31 4. Votive deposits in the Danish bogs .............................. 37 5. Bracteates ........................................................................ 40 6. Denmark and the Goths in South-east Europe ............ 45 7. The Continent ................................................................ 48 8. The Breza column (Bosnia) and its fuπark inscription ........................................................................ 50 9. England ............................................................................ 62 10. The Netherlands .............................................................. 68 11. The Borgharen find and its Merovingian context ...... 74 LOOIJENGA/f1/v-xiii 6/12/03 11:03 AM Page viii viii C T O O R 1. Introduction ...................................................................... 78 2. The quest ........................................................................ 79 3. Runes and Romans on the Rhine ................................ 82 4. More Roman connections .............................................. 88 5. The first runewriters ........................................................ 93 6. The West Germanic hypothesis .................................... 94 7. Conclusions ...................................................................... 99 8. Some thoughts on the development of the runic writing system .................................................................. 101 C F S S C 1. Classification of contents ................................................ 105 2. Runic writing andwww.RodnoVery.ru runewriters ...................................... 106 3. Some backgrounds of early runic writing .................... 107 4. Runes and rituals ............................................................ 113 5. Comparing the corpora .................................................. 115 6. The Frisian corpus .......................................................... 117 7. Frisian and Anglo-Saxon runic peculiarities ................ 121 8. Runes in Denmark and South-east Europe .................. 125 9. Continental runewriting .................................................. 127 10. Runes on bracteates ........................................................ 129 11. North Sea coastal links: ornamental runes, rune-crosses, multiple-line runes and mirror-runes ...... 130 12. The influence of Latin .................................................... 133 13. Syntaxis and division marks .......................................... 134 14. On the significance of runeforms .................................. 135 15. Diagnostic runeforms: k, j/g, s, h, l, e ...................... 135 16. The yew rune .................................................................. 138 17. The fate of the j rune, Gmc *jàra OE gèr, jàr ............ 142 CATALOGUE C F E D S- E R I 1. Introduction ...................................................................... 149 2. Checklist; Period I, legible and (partly) interpretable inscriptions ........................................................................ 153 LOOIJENGA/f1/v-xiii 6/12/03 11:03 AM Page ix ix 3. Recent finds ...................................................................... 168 4. Illegible and/or uninterpretable inscriptions .................. 169 5. Gothic runic finds .............................................................. 171 6. Period II, the Blekinge inscriptions .................................. 176 7. Summary and conclusions ................................................ 183 8. A new explanation of the Blekinge texts ........................ 188 C S B R 1. Introduction ........................................................................ 190 2. Alu ...................................................................................... 194 3. Auja .................................................................................... 196 4. Fuπark ................................................................................ 197 5. Laπu .................................................................................... 199 6. Laukaz ................................................................................www.RodnoVery.ru 199 7. Checklist runic bracteates ................................................ 201 8. Conclusions ........................................................................ 222 C S C R I 1. Introduction ........................................................................ 223 2. Checklist; legible and (partly) interpretable inscriptions .......................................................................... 226 3. Recent finds ...................................................................... 264 4. Illegible and/or
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