[←26 ]
Bernard Mees, “Runes in the First Century,” art. cit., p. 205.
[←27 ]
See Klaus Düwel, Runenkunde, 4th ed., J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart 2008, pp. 3 and 13.
[←28 ]
Christophe Bord, “La “réforme” runique. Matériaux pour une réflexion phonologique,” in Etudes germaniques, October–December 1997, pp. 527–528.
[←29 ]
Thomas V. Gamkrelidze and Viaceslav V. Ivanov, Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans. A Reconstruction and Historical Analysis of a Proto-Language and a Proto-Culture, vol. 1, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1995, p. 533–535.
[←30 ]
Venance Fortunat, Carmina VII, 18, Ad Flavium, 19–20. See Fridericus Leo (Hg.), Venanti Honori Clementiani Fortunati presbyteri italici opera poetica, Weidmann, Berlin 1881, p. 173.
[←31 ]
See Aage Kabell, “Periculum Runicum,” in Norsk Tidsskrift for sprogvidenskab, 1967, pp. 94–126.
[←32 ]
Ivar Lindquist, Religiösa runtexter. II. Sparlösa-stenen. Ett svenskt runmonument från Karl den Stores tid upptäckt 1937. Ett tydningsförslag, C. W. K. Gleerup, Lund 1940.
[←33 ]
Elias Wessén, Runstenen vid Röks kyrka, Almqvist & Wiksell, Stockholm 1958.
[←34 ]
Introduction à la runologie, op. cit., p. 20.
[←35 ]
Raymond I. Page, Runes, British Museum Publications, London 1987, p. 12.
[←36 ]
René L. M. Derolez, “The Runic System and its Cultural Context,” in Clairborne W. Thompson (ed.), Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Runes and Runic Inscriptions, op. cit., p. 20.
[←37 ]
François-Xavier Dillmann, “Tripartition fonctionnelle et écriture runique en Scandinavie à l’époque païenne,” in Jacques Bonnet (ed.), Georges Dumézil, op. cit., p. 249. See also Ottar Grønvik, Über die Bildung des älteren und des jüngeren Runenalphabets, Peter Lang, Frankfurt/M. 2001; Wilhelm Heizmann, “Zur Entstehung der Runenschrift,” in John Ole Askedal and al. (Hg.), Zentrale Probleme bei der Erforschung der älteren Runen, op. cit., pp. 9–32.
[←38 ]
Mediaeval Scandinavia, 1970, p. 202.
[←39 ]
Runenkunde, op. cit., p. VI.
[←40 ]
Wolfgang Krause, Runen, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1970. That quote is from the French edition of the book: Les runes, Le Porte-Glaive, Paris 1995, p. 51.
[←41 ]
Lucien Musset, op. cit., p. 36.
[←42 ]
On runology in the Third Reich, one should refer to the excellent work of Ulrich Hunger, Die Runenkunde im Dritten Reich, Peter Lang, Frankfurt/M. 1984.
[←43 ]
We shall mention Guido (von) List’s “ariosophic” deliriums only for the record (Das Geheimnis der Runen, Zillman, Groß-Lichterfelde 1908; Die Bilderschrift der Ario-Germanen, G. von List Gesellschaft, 1910), who imagined an original runic alphabet of eighteen “armanist” runes (the Armanen-Runen), some from the young Fuþark, the others (“Eh” and “Gibor”) are the fruits of his imagination. Guido (von) List’s theories (1848–1919) were picked up after him by Friedrich Bernhard Marby (1882–1966) and Rudolf Arnold Spieth. In that same category of crazy people, there are authors like Siegfried Adolf Kummer (Heilige Runenmacht, Uranus, Hemburg 1932), Rudolf Gorsleben (Hoch-Zeit der Menschen, Koehler u. Amelang, Leipzig 1930), Philipp Strauff, Karl Spiesberger (Runenmagie, Schikowski, Berlin 1955), Ulrich Jürgen Heinz, Kenneth Meadows, David V. Barrett, Igor Warneck, Ralph Tegtmeier, Ralph Blum, Reinhard Florek and many other practitioners of “runic gymnastics,” “runic yoga,” “runic meditation,” “runic astrology,” “runic rituals,” “runic oracles,” “Runelore” of the New Age kind etc.
[←44 ]
Gustav Neckel, “Zur Frage nach dem Ursprung der Runen,” in Studier tillägnade Axel Kock, Gleerup, Lund 1929, pp. 371–375.
[←45 ]
Ludwig F. A. Wimmer, “Die ældste nordiske runeindskrifter,” in Aarbøger for nordisk oldkyndighed og historie, 1867; Runeskriftens oprindelse og udvikling i Norden, V. Prior, København 1874 (trad. all.: Die Runenschrift, Weidmann, Berlin 1887); “Runeskriftens oprindelse og udvikling i Norden,” in Aarbøger for nordisk oldkyndighed og historie, 1894, pp. 1–170; Les monuments runiques de l’Allemagne, Thiele, Copenhagen 1895.
[←46 ]
“Origine et développement de l’écriture runique,” art. cit., p. 6.
[←47 ]
Holger Pedersen, “Runernes oprindelse,” in Aarbøger for nordisk oldyndighed og historie, 1923; “L’origine des runes,” in Mémoires de la Société royale des antiquaires du Nord, 1920–1924, pp. 88–136.
[←48 ]
The Ogham was used in the first centuries after Christ to write Old Irish and Brittonic languages. The phonemes are divided into four five-sign groups, “aicmí” (plural) or aicme (singular). Three of those groups represent consonants, and the fourth one represents the vowels. A fifth group which comprises five diphtongs (forfeda) was added later on. See Christian J. Guyonvarc’h, “Die irische Ogam-Schrift,” in Studium Generale, 1967, 7, pp. 448–456. The “letters” (feda) are represented with notches or dashes along a straight line which usually corresponds to the edge of a stone. Every sign bears the name of a tree or a plant, which explains why this “alphabet” is often called bethe-luis-nin “birch-elm-ash” based on its three first letters. We know their names thanks to Irish grammar manuscripts called Auraicept na n-Eces (“the Poet’s fundamental book”), which date from the 14th century (see George Calder, ed., Book of Ballymote, John Grant, Edinburgh 1917, pp. 272–276). Approximately 350 Ogham inscriptions were found, most of them in southern Ireland or in Wales. They are generally very short and are about incantations or magic. The oldest ones seem to date from the 4th century — but James Carney relies on phonological arguments to claim that they go back to the 1st century (The Invention of the Ogam Cipher “Eriu,” Royal Irish Academy, Dublin 1975, p. 57. See also Joseph Vendryès, “L’écriture ogamique et ses origins,” in Etudes celtiques, 1931, 4, pp. 110–113). Irish tradition attributes the discovery of the Ogham to the god Ogmius/Ogmios, brother of the Dagda, the Celtic Jupiter. Just like Óðinn in the Germanic religion, Ogmios is a “binding” god, a representative of the night sky who is linked to magic. Two stones from the medieval period were found in the Isle of Man (Maughold Stone and Kirk Michael Stone). They bore both Ogham characters and runes. The theory that runic writing and the Ogham share a common origin has been defended by the Norwegian Carl S. Mastrander (1928). Alan Griffiths believes that the Fuþark and the Ogham are both derived from a common Greek alphabet. See Alan Griffiths, “The Fuþark (and Ogam): Order as a Key to Origin,” in Indogermanische Forschungen, 1999, pp. 164–210; “Rune-names: The Irish Connexion,” in Marie Stoklund, Michael Lerche Nielsen, Bente Holmberg and Gillian Fellows-Jensen (ed.), Runes and their Secrets, op. cit., pp. 83–116. On the comparaison of the Ogham and the runes, see also Helmut Birkhan, “Keltisches in germanischen Runennamen?,” in Alfred Bammesberger and Gaby Waxenberger (Hg.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 51, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2006. The origin of the Ogham, its potentials connections with runic writing, as well as whether the alphabetical Ogham is but a secondary use of the Ogham are the source of various theories that we won’t examine here.
[←49 ]
Fritz Askeberg, Norden och kontinenten i gammal tid. Studier i forngermansk kulturhistoria, Almqvist & Wiksell, Uppsala 1944.
[←50 ]
Erik Moltke, “Er runeskriften opstaæt in Danmark?,” in Nationalmuseets arbejdsmark, 1951, pp. 47–58; Runerne i Danmark og deres oprindelse, Forum, København 1976; “The Origines of the Runes,” in Clairborne W. Thompson (ed.), Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Runes and Runic Inscriptions, op. cit., pp. 3–18; Runes and their Origin. Denmark und Elsewhere, National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen 1985. That last publication was publish
ed the day after its author’s death.
[←51 ]
On the influence the Greco-Roman civilization had in Denmark, see Lisbeth M. Imer, “Latin og græsk i romersk jernalder. Fremmed indflydelse på Nordens tidligste runeskrift,” in Aarbøger for nordisk oldkyndighed og historie, 2004 [2007], pp. 63–105.
[←52 ]
The Germanic people definitely encountered Latin writing very early on. To this day, at least forty-nine inscriptions in Latin that go back to the first 160 years after Christ, most of them being on bronze objects, have been found in Scandinavia and especially in Denmark. See Lisbeth M. Imer, “Runes and Romans in the North,” in Futhark. International Journal of Runic Studies, 1, 2010, pp. 41–64. In his Annals (II, 63, 1), Tacitus evokes a letter that Maroboduus sent to Tiberius. In another passage (II, 88, 1), he says that in the time of Arminius, a leader of the Chatti called upon the Roman Senate in writing. He does not mention the writing that was used in those missives, but one can reasonably assume that they were written in Latin. Ammianus Marcellinus mentions a message written by a Germanic leader to his people, but there again in a Roman context (XXIX, 4, 7). Those indications show that the Germanic people weren’t illiterate, and that some of them knew the Latin language. Hence the question: why didn’t they pick up Latin writing? Svante Fischer sees in the appearance of runic writing a reaction against “Roman imperialism,” which was born out of a “desire to imitate the Roman imperialist ideology.” (Roman Imperialism and Runic Literacy. The Westernization of Northern Europe, 150–800 AD, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Uppsala 2005, p. 45).
[←53 ]
Runes and Germanic Linguistics, op. cit., pp. 93–99.
[←54 ]
Bengt Odenstedt, On the Origin and Early History of the Runic Script. Typology and Graphic Variation in the Older Futhark, Gustav Adolf Akademien, Uppsala 1990.
[←55 ]
Elmar Seebold, “Die Herkunft der Runenschrift,” in John Ole Askedal, Harald Bjorvand and Eyvind Fjeld Halvorsen (Hg.), Festskrift til Ottar Grønvik på 75-årsdagen den 21. Oktober 1991, Universitetsforlaget, Oslo 1991, pp. 16–32.
[←56 ]
Henrik Williams, “The Origin of the Runes,” in Tineke Looijenga et Arend Quak (ed.), Frisian Runes and Neighbouring Traditions. Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Frisian Runes at the Fries Museum, Leeuwarden 26–29 January 1994, Rodopi, Amsterdam 1996, pp. 211–218; “Reasons for Runes,” in Stephen D. Houston (ed.), The First Writing. Script Invention as History and Process, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004, pp. 262–273.
[←57 ]
Gad Rausing, “On the Origin of the Runes,” in Fornvännen, 1992, pp. 200–205; Arend Quak, “Noch einmal die Lateinthese,” in Tineke Looijenga and Arend Quak (ed.), Frisian Runes and Neighbouring Traditions, op. cit., pp. 171–179.
[←58 ]
Wilhelm Heizmann, “Zur Entstehung der Runenschrift,” art. cit.; Marie Stoklund, “Die erste Runen — Die Schriftsprache der Germanen,” in Lars Jørgensen, Birger Storgaard and Lone Gebauer Thomsen (Hg.), Sieg und Triumpf. Der Norden im Schatten des Römischen Reiches, Nationalmuseet, Kopenhagen 2003, pp. 172–179; “Chronology and Typology of the Danish Runic Inscriptions,” in Marie Stoklund, Michael Lerche Nielsen, Gillian Fellows-Jensen and Bente Holmberg (ed.), Runes and their Secrets. Studies in Runology, Museum Tusculanum Press, Copenhagen 2006, pp. 355–383.
[←59 ]
François-Xavier Dillmann, “L’écriture runique,” in Anne-Marie Christin (ed.), Histoire de l’écriture, de l’idéogramme au multimédia [2001], 2nd ed., Flammarion, Paris 2012, p. 279. The same expression can be found in “La connaissance des runes dans l’Islande ancienne,” communication prononcée à l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres le 6 février 2009 (Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres. Séances de l’année 2009, janvier-mars, Paris 2009 [paru en décembre 2010], pp. 241–276). See also, from the same author, “Les runes, écriture des Vikings,” in Les Dossiers d’archéologie, April 1992, pp. 20–29. On the Latin theory, See also Terje Spurkland, “The Older ‘Futhark’ and Roman Script Literacy,” in Futhark. International Journal of Runic Studies, 1, 2010, pp. 65–84.
[←60 ]
John S. Robertson, “How the Germanic Futhark Came from the Roman Alphabet,” in Futhark. International Journal of Runic Studies, 2, 2001 [2012], pp. 7–25. The fourth out of six laws of analogical change stated in 1949 by Jerzy Kurylowicz is the following: “When a form is subjected to differentiation after having gone through a morphological transformation, the new form corresponds to the primary function (founding function), and its old form is reserved for the secondary function (founded function).” See Jerzy Kurylowicz, “La nature des procès dits ‘analogiques’,” in Acta linguistica, 1966, pp. 121–138.
[←61 ]
See Ernst Meyer, Einführung in die lateinische Epigraphik, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1973, p. 37. Runic inscriptions on stone monuments (bautarsteinar) can sometimes be vertical, whereas in Roman epigraphy, letters are always laid out horizontally.
[←62 ]
Otto von Friesen, “Om runskriftens härkomst,” in Språkvetenskapliga sällskapets i Uppsala förhandlingar, 1904, pp. 1–55; “Runskriftens härkomst,” in Nordisk Tidsskrift för filologi, 1913, p. 161–180; Röstenen i Bohuslän och runorna i Norden, Almqvist & Wiksell, Uppsala 1924.
[←63 ]
Bernhard Salin and Johanna Mestorf, Die altgermanische Thierornamentik, K. L. Beckmann, Stockholm 1904.
[←64 ]
Introduction à la runologie, p. 45.
[←65 ]
Caesar says about the Helvetians that knew and used “Greek letters” (graecis litteris), and that some tablets inscribed with a “Greek” writing were found in their camp (De bello gallico, I, 29, 1; VI, 14, 3).
[←66 ]
See James W. Marchand, “Les Gots ont-ils vraiment connu l’écriture runique?,” in Mélanges Fernand Mossé, pp. 277–291. On the inscriptions that we just mentioned, the author assures us that “If one examines them up close, one cannot affirm with certainty that they are Gothic” (p. 278). Regarding the inscription of Pietroassa, gutaniowihailag, that was interpreted as Gutani ō(ð)al wī(þ)hailag “hereditary property of the Goths, established and inviolable,” he writes that “it isn’t even certain that gutanio refers to the name of the Goths.” Moreover, it isn’t confirmed that the Goths used the word hailag(s) “sacred” They rather used the word weihs which means the same thing. Marchand also contests the widespread idea that the bishop Ulfilas used some runic signs in the Gothic alphabet he invented to translate the Bible in the 4th century. The question whether the first inscriptions comprised a “Gothic” linguistic element is actually controversial since the days of Sophus Bugge. Rasmus Rask, who was in the 19th century one of the founders of comparative philology held an element he called gotisk in that regard. He refused to assimilate it to the germanisk (“Germanic”) or the tysk (“german”), like Jakob Grimm did. Peter Andreas Munch (1847) also believed there was some “Gothic” in the language used for the inscription of Golden Horns of Gallehus. In 1929 Carl J. S. Marstrander made a list of fourteen inscriptions that were according to him written in Gothic by the Heruli. Wolfgang Krause cut it down to four in 1966. Lena Peterson and then Klaus Düwel became even more skeptical (“A Critical Survey of the Alleged East Germanic Runic Inscriptions in Scandinavia,” in Klaus Düwel, Hg., Runeninschriften als Quellen interdisziplinärer Forschung, op. cit., pp. 556–575). See also Hans Frede Nielsen, “Gothic Runic Inscriptions in Scandinavia?,” in Futhark. International Journal of Runic Studies, 2, 2011 [2012], pp. 51–61.
[←67 ]
Martin Giertz, “Replik till Gad Rausings debattinläg i Fornvännen 87, ‘On the Origin of the Runes’” in Fornvännen, 1993, pp. 27–28.
[←68 ]
Karl Weinhold, Altnordisches Leben, Weidmann, Berlin 1856.
[←69 ]
Carl Pauli, Di
e Inschriften nord-etruskischen Alphabets, Barth, Leipzig 1885.
[←70 ]
Carl J. S. Marstrander, “Om runene og runenavnenes oprindelse,” in Norsk Tidsskrift for sprogvidenskap, 1928, pp. 5–179 (with a summary in French, pp. 180–188). Based on the spearhead of Øvre Stabu, Haakon Shetelig (Préhistoire de la Norvège, H. Aschehoug, Oslo 1926) he also believed it was the Marcomanni. It was also the opinion of Karl Simon (1928).
[←71 ]
Robert Nedoma, Die Inschrift auf dem Helm B von Negau. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Deutung norditalischer epigraphischer Denkmäler, Fassbaender, Wien 1995; Thomas L. Markey, “A Tale of the Two Helmets: Negau A and B,” in The Journal of Indo-European Studies, 2001, pp. 69–172.
Runes and the Origins of Writing Page 13
