The Vimose Dedication as Ritual Language

Abstract

The inscription on the Vimose buckle has been the subject of a long and diverse historiography. Taken in the light of early runic epigraphic typology, however, the inscription appears to preserve an early example of Germanic ritual language. Rather than a product of Romanisation (as archaeologists have assumed for similar votive bog finds), the inscription on the Vimose buckle is better understood in terms of the linguistic anthropology of dedicatory epigraphs. The Vimose text shows clear signs of being a thoroughly native expression, a linguistically archaic inscription which alliterates, features pro-drop, verb-final word order and athematic verbal inflection.