Anglo-Saxon Runes
What follows is an extract from A. Stanton's book "Ripples in Time: the Anglo-Saxon Runes".
Ripples in Time is the best introduction to the runes for someone of an English-speaking background. As you will see from this extract it is scholarly, but written in an easily read style. As a result it has been praised by countless heathen and pagan magazines.
Ripples in Time is available only from PO Box 4333, University of Melbourne, Victoria, 3052, Australia. The price, including postage and handling, is A$10.00 within Australia, or US$15.00 airmailed anywhere in the world.
Rune magic
Early academic runologists thought that the oldest runic inscriptions couldn’t be earlier than about 300 AD. As new discoveries were made, the origins of the runes had to be pushed further and further back in time. The revised dates in turn made it difficult to derive the runes from Greek or Roman letters.
The "solution" to this problem was to suggest that the runes were borrowed from North Italic or Etruscan scripts. This theory is still around, largely because it was endorsed by the influential Ralph Elliott.[1] Even in this decade the Etruscan theory still occasionally bobs up.[2]
This theory was examined, and rejected, by Richard Morris. He showed that the closest similarity to the runes is found in the archaic script of pre-Classical Greece.[3]
That would have come as no surprise to any runologists who took the trouble to read the works of 16th century humanist scholars in the Holy Roman Empire and the Netherlands. They were familiar with the runes, and some (such as Goropius Becanus) saw them as proof that the ancient Greek script was derived from Germanic forms.
Just as many academics have had trouble investigating the origin of runic script, as a result of their ad hoc postulates and prejudices, so it has been with academic studies of rune magic.
The classic account of Germanic divination is found in Tacitus’ Germania, written some time around 98 AD. In Chapter 10 of this book, Tacitus describes the Germanic practice of inscribing "notae" on pieces of wood which they would then cast in order to obtain omens.
Jacob Grimm was the first modern writer to state that by the word "notae" Tacitus actually meant runes.[4] This assumption has often been questioned, [5]however, and it cannot be simply assumed to be the case.
If we can’t rely on Tacitus, then the most compelling literary evidence for the use of runes in divination and magic comes from Norse records. These were almost entirely composed long after the Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity, and can only shed light on Anglo-Saxon heathen practice if we have separate, independent evidence that runes played a part in Anglo-Saxon religion and/or magic.
Fortunately, there is a good deal of independent evidence.
In the great Old English epic Beowulf we learn that before the heroes sailed for Denmark "they observed the omens" - hæl sceawedon - (Beowulf, 204). In his Ecclesiastical History (5, 10) Bede says that casting lots was customary among the heathen Anglo-Saxons. The unknown poet of Andreas (lines 1099 onwards) has heathen Anglo-Saxons casting lots ("with hellish acts"!)
The connection between these "omens" or "lots" and runes is suggested by a passage in Bede. In the year 679 a young Northumbrian prisoner called Imma was bound, but his bonds kept coming undone. His astonished captors asked him "whether he knew loosening runes and had about him the letters written down" (but note that the precise meaning of this passage has been disputed). The equation of runes with magic was familiar to devout Christians in the eleventh century, when Bishop Ælfric used the phrase "through magic or through runes" (ðurh drycræft oððe runstafen).
The strongest literary evidence of Anglo-Saxon runelore is the Runic Poem, dating from the eighth or ninth century, which we will examine soon.
At this stage, however, we still have no proof of rune magic among the heathen Anglo-Saxons. After all, Bede, Ælfric and the Andreas poet were all Christians. Their testimony is not reliable. Proper confirmation can only come from archaeology.
Well into the Christian period, gravestones were still carved with runes - although other scripts would have been more familiar. Also, several of the Loveden Hill funerary urns have fairly clear Tiw runes on them. Even the rather sceptical Page, summing up such cases, says "Surely all these imply a belief that runes were somehow appropriate to an object on close terms with death".[6]
Another clue comes from amulet rings with magic runic inscriptions. The best known are from Bramham Moor and Greymoor Hill. Both include runes spelling "ærkriu", which is known elsewhere as a spell for staunching blood.
There are other clues, such as the fuþorc that appears on the Thames scramasax. To quote the sceptical Page again, "I know no practical explanation outside magic".
Runes from the Thames Scramasax
The most intriguing evidence of all, however, comes from the cemetery at Caistor-by-Norwich. There, 30 ankle-bones from sheep were found in a fifth century Anglo-Saxon cremation urn. One contains a runic inscription of six characters. This was the subject of a brilliant investigation by C L Wrenn[7], who concluded that they could not be be transliterated into any ordinary word. He suggested that the inscription is a magical invocation, rah(w)han, and is related to the Old Norse verb ragna, to "invoke magic upon".
Next, Wrenn examined the individual runes of this inscription "as magico-religious cult-symbols".
The Caistor-by-Norwich inscription
The first he interpreted as "riding", probably signifying a wagon or chariot. The second could refer to an ash-tree, or a god (probably Woden), depending on the date. The next is yew-tree, followed by hail or storm, then the ash-tree or Woden again, and finally need or distress - a concept "linked to death or killing".
Wrenn interpreted this as referring to "a wagon or chariot which is to convey the spirit of the dead man to the dwelling of the gods", possibly with Woden himself guiding the wagon. According to Wrenn the inscription "is a very sacred and mysterious magic incantation in a word, probably only intelligible to one familiar with the Germanic pagan priestly lore ... further, that this magic word of incantation contained cult-symbols which recalled significant features of death and its ceremonies".
However it may be interpreted, the archaeological evidence supports the literary statements about Anglo-Saxon rune magic, and clears the way for us to look at the Runic Poem.
Notes |
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| R W V Elliott, Runes, Manchester University Press, 1959. |
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| e.g. G & L Bonfante, in T J Hooker, Reading the Past, University of California Press, 1990. |
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| Richard L Morris, Runic and Mediterranean Epigraphy, Odense University Press, 1988. |
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| Deutsche Mythologie XXXV. |
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| e.g. by Klaus Duewel, Runenkunde, 2nd ed. 1983. |
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| R I Page, An Introduction to English Runes, Methuen, 1973. |
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| C L Wrenn, Magic in an Anglo-Saxon Cemetery, in English and Medieval Studies, Allen & Unwin, 1962. |
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