Runic and Latin Written Culture: Co-Existence and Interaction of Two Script Cultures in the Norwegian Middle Ages
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen Deutsches Seminar Abteilung für Skandinavistik Magisterarbeit Runic and Latin Written Culture: Co-Existence and Interaction of Two Script Cultures in the Norwegian Middle Ages Eingereicht von Stephanie Elisabeth Baur zur Erlangung des Grades Magistra Artium im Fachbereich Nordische Philologie Eingereicht am: 14. Juni 2011 1. Gutachterin: Prof. Dr. Stefanie Gropper 2. Gutachterin: Prof. Dr. Antje Wischmann TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION 1 2 CHANGING PERSPECTIVES IN RUNOLOGICAL RESEARCH: A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW 6 2.1 Prelude: Medieval Theoretical Treatments of Runes 7 2.2 Early Modern Runological Research 8 2.3 The 19th Century: The Beginnings of Modern Runology 10 2.4 Runological Research in the 20th Century 13 2.5 Paradigmatic Change: From Magic Script to Functional Writing System 14 3 METHOD AND CLASSIFICATION 18 3.1 Some Preliminary Remarks on Runology and Method 18 3.2 Basic Methodological Procedures 19 3.3 Principles for Transliteration 21 3.4 Identification of Runic Inscriptions: The Corpus Editions 24 3.5 Latin Runic Inscriptions 27 3.6 Definition of Terms 28 3.7 The Two-Script Culture of the Norwegian Middle Ages: 30 Establishing the Cultural Background 8 4 TWO SCRIPT SYSTEMS IN CONTACT: LEVELS OF IMPACT 38 4.1 Script System: Changes in the Fuþark 39 4.1.1 Preliminaries: The Concept behind the Viking Age Runes 40 4.1.2 Expansion of the Fuþark: Strategies and Motivation 43 4.1.3 Preliminary Conclusion 55 4.2 Writing Conventions: Consequences for Runic Orthography and Punctuation 57 4.2.1 Preliminaries: Writing Conventions in the Older and Viking Runic Tradition 61 4.2.2 Runic Orthography and Writing Conventions in the Middle Ages 68 4.2.3 Preliminary Conclusion 103 4.3 Form and Content: Adaptions on the Level of Media and Subject Matter 105 4.3.1 Preliminaries: Media and Content in the Older and Viking Runic Tradition 107 4.3.2 Diversification of Media and Content in the Scandinavian Middle Ages 112 4.3.3 Preliminary Conclusion 139 5 CONCLUSION AND PERSPECTIVES 141 6 APPENDIX 146 6.1 Abbreviations and References 147 6.2 Bibliography 148 6.3 Zusammenfassung in deutscher Sprache 159 6.4 Eidesstattliche Erklärung 161 1 INTRODUCTION When Latin writing finally reached Scandinavia sometime in the 11th century, it was met by a strong and well established runic writing tradition which had been in permanent use for over 800 years.1 Latin script culture came in the wake of Christianity and church organisation, and the Latin alphabet was by this point of time already deeply rooted in social, political, and religious institutions in which it served as a pragmatic writing system. However, in spite of the powerful apparatus in the service of which Latin writing stood, the native script culture was not immediately superseded by the newly arrived script system. Instead, there evolved for a period of some 300 years a vibrant two-script culture which was characterised by the peaceful coexistence of runic and Latin writing. Runic tradition not only survived by the side of Latin script culture. It rather appears to have experienced an enormous upswing after the introduction of Latin writing, and the use of runes continued to flourish well into the 14th century.2 This development proved to be unique in the European context in which runes had otherwise become negligible after the Latin alphabet had been implemented. The important role which runic writing played in the Nordic Middle Ages and “the extent to which runes were used for everyday communications” in the same period was recog- nised not before large amounts of runic inscriptions were excavated from the soil of medieval Scandinavian trading towns from the mid-1950s onwards.3 The majority of medieval (i.e. after 1050) runic inscriptions known until then originated from an ecclesiastical setting: Of about 500 medieval runic inscriptions, some 370 were cut into the walls or woodworks of churches or found on church fixtures and gravestones; only some twenty-five came from medieval town centres.4 Therefore, the extensive finds of urban and secular runic inscriptions changed our picture of runic writing in the Middle Ages completely and led to a re-evaluation of written culture in medieval Scandinavia. In Bergen alone, some 660 runic inscriptions were gradually unearthed after the disastrous conflagration of 1955 had destroyed four medieval bygårder (manors) at Bryggen.5 These inscriptions date from the period circa 1150–1350, with their main concentration being from about 1250–1330; some are as late as the early 1 Spurkland 2001a: 213; Spurkland 2001b: 121; cf. Knirk 1994: 170f. 2 Spurkland 2001a: 3. 3 Knirk et al. 1993: 554. 4 Seim 1988a: 10; Knirk 1994: 172. The urban inscriptions stemmed from Bergen, Oslo, Tønsberg, and Trondheim, disregarding the circa forty inscriptions scratched into the walls of NIDAROS cathedral (N469–N506). 5 Hagland 1998a: 620. For an overview over the number of inscriptions found in other Norwegian trading towns, in the rest of the Scandinavia, and in its medieval catchment area, cf. Hagland 1998a: 619f. The bygårder destroyed were: Gullskoen, Bugården, Engelgården and Søstergården; each of them embraced several smaller buildings. For a detailed description and a map over the area, NIyR VI: 245–248. 1 1400s.6 In contrast to those inscriptions known until then, most of the new discoveries occur on rune-sticks (so called rúnakefli) which had no other function than that of a neutral writing material. In addition, inscriptions have been found on “bone, antler, leather (shoes), and pottery”.7 Also the subject matter of these urban inscriptions differs considerably from the earlier known material. They give insight into a broad spectrum of everyday communication, and almost anything conceivable of being put into writing is represented: There are private and business correspondences, ownership labels, religious and secular texts, poetry, writing exercises, and magical sequences.8 A considerable proportion of these runic inscriptions comprise runic texts in Latin.9 The finds from medieval town centres more than doubled the Norwegian corpus of later runes, and “[w]ith its present total of about 1400, Norway has as many registered medieval runic inscriptions as all other countries together.”10 The large amounts of runic inscriptions with a mundane and communicative function provide evidence that the Scandinavian Middle Ages (ca. 1100–1500) were marked by the contemporaneous presence not only of two languages, i.e. Latin and the vernacular, but also of two distinctive script cultures. Obviously, runes lived on throughout the Middle Ages not only as antiquarian pastime among clergy but as a convenient means of communication among commoners and merchants. Although the two script cultures represented entirely different traditions and mentalities, they came into close contact and mutually inspired and influenced each other. In a society with a steadily increasing number of people acquainted with native as well as Latin writing traditions, particularly in the context of the religious and administrative activities of the Church, there emerged among Scandinavians some bilingual and digraphic competence.11 This proficiency inevitably led to overlapping and interference between the two traditions and, thus, found expression in the runic epigraphic corpus and to a degree also in literate manuscripts. The present paper deals with the nature of the coexistence of the two script cultures. My main concern is to explore the medieval runic corpus with regard to the manner in which runic tradition dealt with the many stimuli coming to Scandinavia with the Latin alphabet and Latin script culture. I intend to pursue a slightly different approach than has been done in previous research. My objective is not to reconfirm the influence which Latin script culture undeniably exerted on runic writing. Consequently, I am neither interested in repeating the 6 Knirk et al. 1993: 553; Spurkland 2001a: 187. 7 Seim 1988a: 11; Knirk 1994: 172. 8 Spurkland 2001a: 187. 9 Cf., for instance, Knirk 1998. 10 Knirk 1994: 172; Knirk et al. 1993: 553. Cf. Hagland 1998a: 620: “The major portion of discovered medieval runes originates in Norway. At the present stage a total of ca. 1500 inscriptions are known from that area, […].” 11 Gustavson 1995: 205f.; Spurkland 2004: 334. 2 diachronic ‘success story’ of Latin writing becoming the sole system of notation in the North. I shall, on the contrary, adopt a synchronic perspective and analyse how runic tradition took advantage of the presence of another script system. I seek to demonstrate that runic writing neither passively yielded to nor slavishly copied from the new script culture which from the 11th century onwards gained permanent foothold in Scandinavia. Rather, runic tradition responded to and sovereignly dealt with the impulses springing from Latin writing: Rune- carvers took up particular elements and exploited them for their own benefit and, what is even more important, on the basis of the runic tradition’s own premises. Thus, although runic tradition allowed for interference with the newly arrived script culture, it by and large maintained its characteristic features and independent status in the comparatively long period of its coexistence with Latin script culture. Hence, my point is not to show that and how Latin written culture exerted influence on or even dominantly replaced runic writing. I rather try to show that and how runic tradition handled the stimuli creatively and developed them in due consideration of its own historic character and its prerequisites inherited from the Viking and older runic tradition. My approach is of a systematic and cultural-historical nature. I aim to illustrate that the contact of the two script cultures occurred and found expression on three different levels of runic tradition: First, modifications are visible on the level of the script system, i.e. rune-row, itself.