A Runic Inscription from Baconsthorpe, Norfolk

AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR NEW LIGHT ON LITERACY IN EIGHTH-CENTURY EAST ANGLIA: A RUNIC INSCRIPTION FROM BACONSTHORPE, NORFOLK Abstract: An object inscribed with Anglo-Saxon runes recently found in East Ang- lia is tentatively identified as an artefact associated with the use of manuscripts: a page-holder or page-turner. The well-formed and elegant inscription allows us to identify a hitherto unrecognized runic graph in the Anglo-Saxon tradition as well as a previously unrecorded inflected form of the Old English verb cunnan. The find constitutes rich and special evidence of the development of a literate culture in Ang- lo-Saxon England, and in particular of the relationship between runic and Roman literacy in the later eighth century. 1. THE FIND Towards the end of May 2009, an item bearing a runic inscription was found during archaeological excavations in the parish of Baconsthorpe, Norfolk (Fig. 1). The archaeological fieldwork was being conducted along the line of a cable-trench associated with an off-shore wind-farm development. The inscribed object was discovered through a metal-detector scan of the surface of the subsoil after the uppermost layer of topsoil had been removed by machine. The object cannot be associated directly with any specific archaeological context. Roman-period structural remains were identified close by, but there are no other Anglo-Saxon or later medieval features or finds from this site. The forms of the runes are discussed in detail below, but it may be noted at the outset that, with the partial exception of one remarkable graph that occurs three times in the inscription, the runes are entirely con- sistent with what we are familiar with the Anglo-Saxon (sometimes called ‘Anglo-Frisian’) fuþorc. They include one clear and one inferred example of ‚, āc, an innovation characteristic of this branch of runic writing.1 1 There has been some debate over the circumstances and dating of this development: John Hines, “Some Observations on the Runic Inscriptions of Early Anglo- Saxon England”, Old English Runes and their Continental Background, ed. Alfred Bammesberger (Heidelberg: Winter, 1991) 61–83, at 80–2; Hans Frede Nielsen, “The Emergence of the os and ac Runes in the Runic Inscriptions of England and Frisia: a Linguistic Assessment”, Friesische Studien II, ed. Volker F. Faltings et al. (Odense: Odense UP, 1995) 19–34; David N. Parsons, Recasting the Runes: The Reform of the Anglo-Saxon ‘Futhorc’ (Uppsala: Institutionen för nordiska språk, 1999) 34–8. DOI 10.1515/angl.2011.039 AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR 282 JOHN HINES Fig. 1: Site location The inscribed artefact is a flattened rod of hammered copper alloy with a spatulate head (Fig. 2). The rod survives to a length of c. 35 mm, now bent over. It tapers slightly away from the head, but is around 5 mm wide. The spatulate head is a trapezoid, 18 mm long and 18 mm at its greatest width. One face of the head is decorated with punchmarks along both edges. Its wide end is neatly curved over, implying that the object was designed to grip something, and is decorated with fluted moulding. Similar artefacts have been found at the 7th- to 9th-century Anglo-Sax- on monasteries of Whitby, N. Yorks., Monkwearmouth and Hartlepool, Co. Durham, where they are identified as tweezers, and perhaps more spe- cifically as page-holders or page-turners.2 Such specialized artefacts are more familiar from quite late medieval contexts, including Chester, North- ampton, Norwich, Old Sarum, Winchester and Byham Abbey.3 Besides their association with what must have been centres of literacy, the putative Anglo-Saxon specimens all have wide heads, which would put light and 2 Whitby: Charles R. Peers & Courtenay A. Ralegh Radford, “The Saxon monas- tery of Whitby”, Archaeologia 89 (1943): 27–88, at 61–3, fig. 13, esp. items 5, 9 and 13; Monkwearmouth: Rosemary J. Cramp, Wearmouth and Jarrow Monas- tic Sites (Swindon: English Heritage, 2007) 2: 246: object CA116; Hartlepool: Robin Daniels, Anglo-Saxon Hartlepool and the Foundations of English Chris- tianity (Hartlepool: Tees Archaeology, 2007) 124–5. 3 Martin Biddle, Object and Economy in Medieval Winchester (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1990) 2: 756–7; Philip A. Emery et al., Norwich Greyfriars: Pre-Conquest Town and Medieval Friary, East Anglian Archaeology 120 (Norwich, 2000) 143–4. The specimen originally published as a find from the Early Anglo-Saxon cemetery of West Stow, Suffolk is one of a number of unfamiliar artefacts dating as late as the sixteenth century that have somehow become included in this Vic- torian collection of Anglo-Saxon finds: Stanley E. West, West Stow: The Anglo- Saxon Village. East Anglian Archaeology 24 (Ipswich, 1985) Vol. 2, fig. 264.11– 12. AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR A RUNIC INSCRIPTION FROM BACONSTHORPE, NORFOLK 283 Fig. 2: The inscribed artefact from Baconsthorpe, Norfolk. Scale 2:1. Drawn by David Dobson. © NAU Archaeology. diffused pressure on the object gripped, not a concentrated, cutting force; the arms of the Baconsthorpe clip also provide rigidity rather than spring. The possibility that this object had a literary function is of especial interest in relation to the form and contents of the runic inscription. This func- tional identification is a realistic one; it is important, however, to stress that as yet it remains conjectural. Tweezers with broad heads are characteristic of the 8th century in England and on the Continent; the arm of the Baconsthorpe object, however, is quite distinctive. 2. THE INSCRIPTION The inscription (Fig. 3) is laid out around the edge of the head, between incised parallel frame-lines. From one corner, the outer frame-line has been cut twice, to follow a slightly different line. The area within which the inscription had to be fitted is small, and the runes themselves are tiny and very finely inscribed: the shortest slightly under 2 mm high; the tallest no more than 2.8 mm. The direction of writing is left-to-right, but there is no identifiable mark showing where the text begins, nor any sign of word-division. A number of the runes are obscured by corrosion that has caused some pitting of the surface of the copper alloy but there is usually AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR 284 JOHN HINES Fig. 3: The inscribed head of the artefact. Scale 4:1. Drawn by David Dobson. © NAU Archaeology. enough still visible for a confident identification of the rune originally inscribed. More problematic are cases where the runes have been cut unu- sually lightly or abrasion has made the staves fainter. The inscription apparently consists of 30 runes (Fig. 4). These include one rune-form { occurring three times (nos. 4, 16 and 25), which for rea- sons explained below, I transliterate as ę, adapting Henry Sweet’s transliteration of a variant graph for the Old English vowels æ and æ.4 The transcription in Figure 4 starts at the left-hand side of one of the two longer lines of the inscription, adjacent to where the rod-shaft and term- inal head join (see Fig. 3). This indeed proves to be where one of two sentences that make up the text of the inscription begins. 4 Henry Sweet, The Oldest English Texts, EETS OS 83 (London: Oxford UP, 1957); Alistair Campbell, Old English Grammar (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1959) § 40; Richard M. Hogg, A Grammar of Old English (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992) § 2,12. In accordance with standard practice, transliterations of runes are given here in bold type; bind-runes (two graphs in ligature) are transliterated with a slash, /, between the individual graphs represented. Old English phonemes are represented in italics, and the usual square brackets [ ] are used for a phonetic symbol. Angled brackets, < >, denote graphemes. AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR A RUNIC INSCRIPTION FROM BACONSTHORPE, NORFOLK 285 Fig. 4: Identifications of the runes in the Baconsthorpe inscription: transliteration. The majority of the identifications are unproblematic. Runes partially obscured by corrosion but where sufficient can be seen for unambiguous identification are nos. 3, 6, 19 and 21. Rune 9, ñ, c, is quite clumsily formed, and it is impossible to be certain that the sloping cross-stave was intentionally cut as part of this rune. That line is indistinguishable to the eye, even under the microscope, from an- other deeper, wider and rounder scratch that runs almost parallel to it across the top of the main stave of this rune. The other clearly identifiable vertical staves here, however, can only form the c-rune. Runes 10–11, UI, ui. The u-rune is partly obscured both by the definite scratch crossing the top of rune 9 just mentioned. A further vertical line, apparently incised with the same tool as used for the runes alongside the u-rune to the right but only visible for a short length, is here identified as an i-rune, I, on grammatical grounds explained below. Runes 12, 13 and 24 are identified as n, a, with the cross stave sloping down from right to left. This is unusual but paralleled in earlier Scandina- vian and Continental inscriptions.5 A slight curvature in the vertical staves of the runes bowing towards the right implies that the inscriber was left- handed, and this might explain the relatively unusual from of the n.On rune 13 a fainter incised line joins the top of the main stave with the upper end of the crossing by-stave to its right, forming a triangle, as at the head of the w-rune, W. The lower by-stave, however, clearly cuts right 5 Bengt Odenstedt, On the Origin and History of the Runic Script: Typology and Graphic Variation in the Older Futhark (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1990) 63–6; Gaby Waxenberger, “The Inscription on the Gandersheim Casket and the Runes in the Old English Runes Corpus (Epigraphic Material)”, Das Gandershei- mer Runenkästchen, ed.

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