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

381 Pages·1999·3.22 MB·English

by  R.I. Page

cover
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title : Runes and Runic Inscriptions : Collected Essays On Anglo-
Saxon and Viking Runes
author : Page, R. I.; Parsons, David
publisher : Boydell & Brewer Ltd.
isbn10 | asin : 0851155995
print isbn13 : 9780851155999
ebook isbn13 : 9780585165110
language : English
subject Inscriptions, Runic, Inscriptions, Runic--Great Britain,
Inscriptions, Runic--Isle of Man, Inscriptions, English (Old) ,
Runes.
publication date : 1998
lcc : PD2014.P34 1998eb
ddc : 430
subject : Inscriptions, Runic, Inscriptions, Runic--Great Britain,
Inscriptions, Runic--Isle of Man, Inscriptions, English (Old) ,
Runes.
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Runes and Runic Inscriptions
Collected Essays on Anglo-Saxon aAnd Viking Runes

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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

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© 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
http://www.boydell.co.uk
website:
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

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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
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On the Transliteration of English Runes (1984) 245
New Runic Finds in England (1987) 275
A Sixteenth-Century Runic Manuscript (1987) 289

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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

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Page vii
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

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Page ix
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

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