Runic Amulets and Magic Objects

Runology and historical sociolinguistics: On runic writing and its social history in the first millennium

“…Even pseudoscript, the imitation of runes, is a central issue of runic writing although it is not always easy for us to distinguish between potentially meaningful texts, nonlexical sequences (formerly inadequately labeled "nonsense inscriptions") and pseudo-runes (see Graf 2011;also Bianchi 2010). Since the 1960s, scholars of runology have been increasingly critical of the traditional propensity to favor magical interpretations of runic inscriptions (on the typology of "magical" runic inscriptions, both older and younger ones, see McKinnell and Simek 2004;MacLeod and Mees 2006). As the French scholar Lucien Musset has so cogently remarked, "the obsession with the magic of many runologists can be explained more from the psychology of the scholars than from the intrinsic content of the inscriptions […] for almost all [of these scholars] the aura of mystery which they ascribe to the fuþark was a supplementary attraction in an otherwise austere field of labor" (Musset 1965: 142-143).…”

‘Giving’ and ‘Making’ in Early Runic Epigraphy

“…Classical horse‐and‐rider amulets, in comparison, usually feature the names of figures such as King Solomon or invocations of God – not fabricatory expressions; see Bonner (: nos 294ff.). The Tjurkö legend was clearly composed in a rhythmic, poetic manner, though: w urtē and w alhakurnē alliterate, ‘foreign‐corn’ has usually been taken to represent an allusive reference to ‘gold’ (and hence metonymically the bracteate), and the mannered syntax evidently represents a distraction of the alliterating line wurtē rūnō r an walhakurnē from its logically expected position between its subject Helda r and its indirect object Kunimu(n)diu (or vice versa); see Salberger (), Naumann (: 698, : 152), Spurkland (: 28–30), MacLeod & Mees (: 95), Beck (: 14–15), Mees (: 216, : 79), Düwel (: 51–2) and Düwel & Nowak (: 403–9) . We seem only to be being afforded access to a functionally basic part of a broader magico‐religious background by Helda r – a context we are not immediately privy to today which supplied the rest of the amuletic meaning to a fifth‐ or sixth‐century audience.…”

“…In early Northern Europe it appears largely to have been only memorial stones which were lavished with written messages that could permanently ‘speak’ to observers (i.e. with aiuinruna r or ‘eternal runes’ as the Malt stone seems to describe such creations; see MacLeod & Mees : 221–2). Inscribed funerary monuments are well‐enough known from Roman sites, but the corpus of Latin altar stones even includes scores of dedications erected by and for early Germanic figures, votive altars raised votum solvit ‘in fulfilment of a vow’ being particularly common in second‐ and third‐century Germano‐Roman contexts from the ancient Rhineland; see CIL XIII.2 7776‐8860 & XIII.4 11981–12086, Gutenbrunner (: 200–37), Mees (, : 203–4) and MacLeod & Mees (: 165ff.).…”

“…with aiuinruna r or ‘eternal runes’ as the Malt stone seems to describe such creations; see MacLeod & Mees : 221–2). Inscribed funerary monuments are well‐enough known from Roman sites, but the corpus of Latin altar stones even includes scores of dedications erected by and for early Germanic figures, votive altars raised votum solvit ‘in fulfilment of a vow’ being particularly common in second‐ and third‐century Germano‐Roman contexts from the ancient Rhineland; see CIL XIII.2 7776‐8860 & XIII.4 11981–12086, Gutenbrunner (: 200–37), Mees (, : 203–4) and MacLeod & Mees (: 165ff.). Nothing of the kind is usually recognised in early runic contexts: what early runic dedications there are have traditionally been seen as largely to be limited to instances of the verb wīju and its variants/congeners (< *weih‐ij‐ō to IE * weik ‐ ‘sift, set apart’; cf.…”

An Arithmetical Crux in the Woden Passage in the Old English Nine Herbs Charm

“…21 For instance, Singer's reading is accepted by Philippson (1929), Grattan and Singer (1952), Stürzl (1960), Orton (2003), Cooke (2003), Storms's by Elliott (1957Elliott ( , 1959Elliott ( , 2nd ed. 1989, Mayr-Harting (1972), Rodrigues (1993), Herbert (1994), MacLeod and Mees (2006). Page (1973) and Bremmer (1991) are more sceptical of this interpretation of runic magic.…”