Overview
Rune poems are proverbial mnemonic kennings that list the letters of runic alphabets while providing an explanatory poetic stanza for each letter. Four different poems from before the mid-20th century have been preserved: the Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem, the Norwegian Rune Poem, the Icelandic Rune Poem and the Swedish Rune Poem. Note that the singularis term "rune poem" is a bit anachronistic, as there exist several variations of the Icelandic, and Swedish poems, etc. The Icelandic and Norwegian poems list 16 Younger Futhark runes, while the Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem lists 29 Anglo-Saxon runes. Each poem differs in poetic verse, but they contain numerous parallels between one another. Further, the poems provide references to figures from Norse and Anglo-Saxon paganism, the latter included alongside Christian references.
A list of rune names is also recorded in the Abecedarium Nordmannicum, a 9th-century manuscript, but whether this can be called a poem or not is a matter of some debate. The rune poems have been theorized as having been mnemonic devices that allowed the user to remember the order and names of each letter of the alphabet and may have been a catalog of important cultural information, memorably arranged; comparable with the Old English sayings, Gnomic poetry, and Old Norse poetry of wisdom and learning. The Swedish poems features some clear neologisms for later sound developments, like replacing os ("inlet") with oos ("fumes") for the o-rune ᚯ, as the primary sound for o in Middle Norse became instead of .
Old English Rune Poem
The Old English Rune Poem as recorded was likely composed in the 7th century and was preserved in the 10th-century manuscript Cotton Otho B.x, fol. 165a – 165b, housed at the Cotton library in London, England. In 1731, the manuscript was lost with numerous other manuscripts in a fire at the Cotton library. However, the poem had been copied by George Hickes in 1705 and his copy has formed the basis of all later editions of the poems. George Hickes' record of the poem may deviate from the original manuscript. Hickes recorded the poem in prose, divided the prose into 29 stanzas, and placed a copper plate engraved with runic characters on the left-hand margin so that each rune stands immediately in front of the stanza where it belongs.
For five of the runes (wen, hægl, nyd, eoh, and Ing) Hickes gives variant forms and two more runes are given at the foot of the column; cweorð and an unnamed rune (calc) which are not handled in the poem itself. A second copper plate appears across the foot of the page and contains two more runes: stan and gar. Van Kirk Dobbie states that this apparatus is not likely to have been present in the original text of the Cotton manuscript and states that it's possible that the original Anglo-Saxon rune poem manuscript would have appeared similar in arrangement of runes and texts to that of the Norwegian and Icelandic rune poems.
Old Icelandic Rune Poem
The Icelandic Rune Poem is recorded in four Arnamagnæan manuscripts, the oldest of the four dating from around 1500. In early runology it is referred to as "divided into three" (, Early Modern Swedish: tridelorne, ). Other variations have also been documented later on, and Olaus Verelius showcased some short-form variants in 1675, similar in length to the Swedish rune poems. Jón Ólafsson of Grunnavík recorded a form in 1732, attributed to either Magnus Olafsson () or a Sveinn a Barði, with Latin translations.
AM 687 d 4°
The oldest recorded Icelandic rune poem is found in the manuscript AM 687 d 4° (). This it is the most popular basis for modern normalizations of the Icelandic rune poem. However, AM 687d 4° is damaged and impossible to make out at parts, leaving some bits as guesswork which varies between sources. Especially ᚿ Nauð (n), ᛆ Ár (a), ᛒ Bjarkan (b) and ᛦ Ýr (ʀ) are effected. British historian and runologist R. I. Page discussed this in detail in his publication "The Icelandic rune poem" (1999). R. I. Page transcribed AM 687 d 4° (hereafter = A), text: f. Iv, 11. 1-16. (Plate 1), as the following. He gives the following notes for the transcription: Abbreviated words/syllables are rendered in italic (which cannot be more than a general indication since the scribe was inconsistent in writing out the forms of some endings).
Letters and groups which the scribe omitted in error or through lack of space are supplied within angled brackets . Letter sequences that cannot now be identified are inserted, for convenience of reading, within square brackets , on the evidence either of the available space or of related texts. Such added readings have, of course, little authority for the A version of the poem. The convention .... indicates that the reading cannot be supplied with any conviction, and merely suggests very roughly how many graphs are lost. It is not always easy to distinguish certain spelling conventions in the manuscript - whether u or v, d or d is intended, for instance. In such cases I have perhaps rather arbitrarily chosen one graph or the other. It is sometimes hard to determine whether the scribe intended a space between adjacent words or not, and again my practice here is inevitably arbitrary.
Stops (raised points, colons) are not always easy to distinguish from chance marks on the parchment surface. Rune forms are here given their conventional transliterations in bold characters. with slight corrections. Red markers indicates guesswork or other alterations from R. I. Page's transcription above.
Old Norwegian Rune Poem
The Norwegian Rune Poem was preserved in a 17th-century copy of a destroyed 13th-century manuscript. The Norwegian Rune Poem is preserved in skaldic metre, featuring the first line exhibiting a "(rune name)(copula) X" pattern, followed by a second rhyming line providing information somehow relating to its subject.
Swedish Rune Poem
There are multiple recorded Swedish rune poems, all of which are short rune kennings. Some appears to be later Medieval creations pertaining to sound changes, while others show archaic features of unknown older descent. A select few are cognate to the Norwegian and Icelandic poems, and some others appear regional. Some of the kennings are classic proverbs or riddles, thus appearing standalone in other material as well. The poem for ᛁ is ("ice") is a common proverb or riddle, stating that "the ice is the broadest bridge". The poem for ᚾ nödh ("need, distress, constraint") is found as a proverb in the 14th century: nødh ær iw enga koster ("need is of no choice"), i.e. when forced, you only have one choice, later appearing in the 17th century as: noͤdhen aͤr eenda kost ("need is the only choice").
The earliest recorded poem was done rather unknowingly by Johannes Bureus in 1599, simply listing them as "signific" in Latin. An incomplete alternative collection was recorded in a letter by in 1600 (although not published until 1908), and a supplemented third version, more similar to the Bureus collection, was published by Georg Stiernhielm in 1685. Various anachronistic forms are also recorded by Olaus Verelius in 1675, found scattered alongside some equivelant short forms of the Icelandic poems. The Swedish poems are understudied and have received relatively little attention from runologists.
Bureus rune poems
In the late 16th century, pioneer runologist and mystic Johannes Bureus traveled around Sweden and researched runic lore (by 1646, he and his assistants had recorded more than 650 runic inscriptions in Sweden). Bureus had learnt to read runes in 1594 by studying a runestone which was fitted as a stepping stone in the Riddarholmen Church in Stockholm. Five years later (1599), he had gathered enough knowledge to publish his first runological work, a copper-plate print, called Runakänslånäs räräspån (, roughly "first attempt at runic instruction"), also known as "Bureus' Runic Tablet" (). It was intended as a teaching tool in runic knowledge, and contains examples of different runic alphabets, runic forms and runestone texts, and explanations of the meaning of the runes, a work which was highly regarded and widely used by other researchers in the field of runology.
On said print, he lists runic poems for each rune. These poems are written in his own runic standard, which cannot be properly displayed in unicode. Bureus later refined his standard in his runic textbook Runa ABC, and this does align with unicode, and the poems below has been rendered in this standard. Transliterations have been rendered in the modern Swedish alphabet.
Granius rune poems
In 1600, Swedish-German mathematician (1569–1631) collected a number of Swedish rune poems in a letter. Granius recorded poems for 14/16 runes, lacking poems for ᛘ (m) and ᛦ (ʀ), the last two runes in the Swedish Medieval Futhark order. Beyond poems, Granius also listed various names for the runes. The names and poems do not follow the exact same order – rune name order: ; poem order: . Below, the order is normalized according to the Swedish medieval futhark order, since Granius' orders appears non important. Translations and transliterations have been corrected slighty based on the original letter. Alliteration is marked in bold.
Abecedarium Nordmannicum
Recorded in the 9th century, the Abecedarium Nordmannicum is the earliest known catalog of Norse rune names, though it does not contain definitions, is partly in Continental Germanic and also contains an amount of distinctive Anglo-Saxon rune types. The text is recorded in Codex Sangallensis 878, kept in the St. Gallen abbey, and may originate from Fulda, Germany.
The Rune Poem Puzzle from the Old Bø Church
In the Old Bø Church in Telemark a 12th century runic inscription is preserved which uses kennings for runes very similar to the rune poems. Reading the lines from the bottom up and resolving the kennings one gets the name of the woman with whom the rune-carver was in love. Resolving the kennings the reader gets the following runes: Together they spell out the name Gudrun.
See also
* Bríatharogam * Gothic alphabet * List of runestones * Runic magic * Apple Pie ABC * Alphabet song
Sources
* (1998). Revising Oral Theory: Formulaic Composition in Old English and Old Icelandic Verse. Routledge. * (1915). Runic and Heroic Poems of the Old Teutonic Peoples. Cambridge University Press. (Internet Archive) * (Editor) (2007). Anglo-Saxon England. Cambridge University Press. * (1999). An Introduction to English Runes. Boydell Press. * * * (1942). The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems. Columbia University Press * The Rune Poem (Old English), ed. and tr. , Poems of Wisdom and Learning in Old English. Cambridge, 1976: 80–5. * et al. (eds.) Old English Poetry in Facsimile Project, (Madison, WI: Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture, 2019-). Online edition of the Old English Rune Poem, annotated and linked to digital facsimile of its first transcription, with a modern translation.
External links
* Rune Poems from "Runic and Heroic Poems" by Bruce Dickins