Runes and the Origins of Writing
Page 6
Lucien Musset admits that it seems impossible to exclude magic from five large groups of texts:
Those which contain the same rune repeated several times without any rational meaning for it […] those which contain some incomprehensible or unpronounceable sentences when they have been positively deciphered […] those which were placed in tombs so that they weren’t accessible to people from this world and also contain unintelligible sentences or conjurations […] those which clearly contain curses or spells […] those whose author call himself a ‘priest,’ a ‘magician,’ or anything like it […] and finally those which contain one of the ‘keywords’ of Nordic magic: alu, laukaR and maybe laþu-. Those three mysterious terms are relatively frequent in ancient texts.160
The magical character of many inscriptions in the Old Fuþark can actually hardly be contested. Yes, not all ancient inscriptions are “magical,” but the ones that are linked to magic are so plentiful that it can not be fortuitous. How could this be if the magical character or power of the runes were only a secondary or late derived belief? Musset quite correctly makes a reference to some undecipherable or hardly comprehensible inscriptions, like the ones that only repeat the same rune or sequence of runes (gagaga on the lance-shaft of Kragehul, which associates the runes *gebō and *ansuz, aaaaaaaa on the amulet of Lindholmen, etc.). If some of those runic inscriptions can’t be deciphered, it should be because they hadn’t transcribed words yet, rather than they looked like letters the engraver used according to their original magical meaning.
After a careful examination of the arguments for and against it, Klaus Düwel and Wilhelm Heizmann sided with a magical interpretation of a large number of the most ancient runic inscriptions.161 “One cannot separate the use of the runes from practicing magic” also writes Alain Marez, and then he adds:
That tight connection which goes through various degrees of the epigraphic tradition from its origins to its disappearance is apparent in the simple fact that [runic] signs are sometimes not meant to transcribe a linguistic fact like the notation of an oral excerpt, but rather it transcribes an extra-linguistic value of the sign, meaning a mental representation it implies thanks to the acrophonic principle.162
16
The Word “Rune”
The modern use of the word “rune” (Danish rune, Swedish runa) was borrowed from the Scandinavian languages in the 17th century, but the term refers to the Fuþark’s letters since at least the 4th century. Confirmed in the 6th century as runa, the term seems to have been mentioned for the time as rūnō (plural rūnōR) in the inscription of the Einang stone from Norway, which goes back to the second half of the 4th century: dagaR þaR rūnō faihidō, “(I) Dagr I colored the runes.”163 We find it again in the funereal inscription of the Järsberg stone, found in 1862 in the Swedish province of Värmland, which dates from around 530: …runoRw aritu “I engraved the runes.”
Some authors tried to link the run- root (which is derived from Proto-Germanic *runō-) back to the ancient Indo-European stem *wr-th-enā. Georges Dumézil also linked the names of the Greek and Indian gods Ouranos and Váruna to it (“binding” gods, if one decides to make those names be derived from the root *wer- “binding,” but also whose name can mean “oath” or “true words” if one decides to make them be derived from the root *wer- “speaking”).164 But that is very disputable. The root *rew- “shouting” (see Latin rumor) doesn’t work either.
The consistent meaning of the term is whisper, secret, mystery, hidden thing, which seems to confirm that the runes were first used for magical purposes or meant for the few In Old High German, rūna “secret, secret conversation,” rún in Old Norse “secret, mysterious conference,” rūna in Old Saxon “secret, mystery,” rūna in Gothic “mystery,” rūn in Old English “secret, consultation, whisper,” and the plural rūnar in Icelandic “secrets, mysterious conferences” are a testament to it. The same meaning can be found in Celtic languages with rún in Old Irish “secret, mystery, ulterior motive,” rhin in Welsh “secret, mystery,” rhin in Middle Welsh “secret, mystery,” rùn in Gaelic “secret, ulterior motive,” rhin in Welsh “secret property, mystery,” and run in Irish “secret.” See also runo in Finnish “charm, ancient song, epic or magic song.”165 Besides those nominal forms, there are also verbal forms: rūnen in Old High German “whispering, speaking quietly,” rūnian in Old English “murmuring, whispering,” rýna in Old Norse “talking intimately,” runian in Old English “speaking softly,” reonian in Old Anglo-Saxon “murmuring,” rýna in Icelandic “having a secret conversation” to round in English, etc. The Gothic translation of the Bible still uses the word runa to translate “mystery” (runa thiudangardos Gudis “mysteries of the kingdom of God,” Mark 4.11). In Beowulf (8th century), the royal councillor is called Run-Wita, “versed in secrets.” All those words give us reason to believe that the runes were originally believed to have some secret aspect.166
The alternative etymology of the word “rune” suggested by Erik Moltke (who argues that the “mystery” or “secret” meanings are secondary) that uses the root ru “making a sound, making some noise” and that was supposedly originally used as an onomatopoeia, absolutely not convincing since runes are writing signs and therefore obviously don’t make any sound (they enable writing, not talking). Other authors tried to derive the name of the runes from an Indo-European root that means “scratching”167 or tried to give them the simple meaning of “inscription, message” (Elmer H. Antonsen). Those suggestions clearly seem to be gratuitous.
The name of the runes can also be found in female names such as Gudrun, Sigrun, Heidrun, Waldrun, Runhilde, etc., as well as in the denomination of the mandrake’s root, Alraun (see Alrūna in Tacitus’s Germania, 8). The mandrake is a hardy herbaceous plant that has been associated with magical beliefs and rituals since Antiquity, perhaps because it is vaguely human-shaped and because of its hallucinogenic properties. It is interesting to note that in the Middle Ages, the plant was believed to predominantly grow at the bottom of gallows, because it was said to be impregnated with the sperm of the hanged men (whose god was Óðinn). It was also used in ointments that were said to be made by “witches.” In the history of the Goths written in 551 by the Latin-speaking historian Jordanes, there is a passage on the king Filimer that alludes to witches: “magas mulieres quas patrio sermone haliurrunnas is ipse cognominat,” “Female witches that were called in the national language haliurrunnas” (Getica, XXIV, 121). That word haliurrunnas was interpreted by Karl Müllenhoff as referring to the Gothic form *haljō-rūnas, like helrūn, helrūne or hellerūne in Old English “witch, female magician” or helerūna or helliruna in Old High German “sorcery, necromancy.” Like other female proper nouns with -rūn, it is compound possessive: “the [female] ones who know the infernal secret.” The first term *haljō is a plural genitive of halja in Gothic “inferno, underworld, shadow world” (see hell in English, Hölle in German). It seems that witches or female magicians were regarded as the holders of the runes’ secret.168
17
Divination and Oracular Use
It seems to us that René L. M. Derolez paints the picture perfectly when he writes that the partition into three ættir “is probably linked to the custom of casting spells three times in a row.” He adds:
When spells were cast, the characters were read by announcing their names. Each name corresponded to a short verse which explained its meaning. The rune n, which was called ‘misery,’ ‘misfortune,’ ‘violence,’ likely heralded misfortune, whereas g, ‘gift,’ ‘wealth,’ ‘favor,’ or j, ‘good year,’ ‘bountiful harvest,’ heralded the favor of the gods. The order of the signs in the runic alphabet differs from the orders of other alphabets, the reason for this should be found in its divinatory use.169
Wherever runes were used, including Iceland and Greenland, there are good reasons to believe that they were used for magical or divinatory purposes. François-Xavier Dillmann speaks of “the old Scandinavian custom of engraving mysterious signs o
r runes in the middle of magico-religious sessions.”170 As a result of that tradition of consulting fate and observing auspices, the Church multiplied its condemnations in the Middle Ages.
A crucial testimony on that topic is in our possession. The Roman historian Tacitus writes about the Germanic people in Germania in 98 that:
They value auspices and fate more than anybody else, their method to know those is quite simple: they cut a branch from a fruit tree and chop it up into small logs, then, after marking them with distinctive signs, they randomly throw them onto a piece of white cloth. Then a priest of the tribe if the consultation is official or the head of the household if the consultation is private invokes the gods and, while watching the skies, he picks up three logs to interpret based on the signs engraved in them.171
The crux of the matter is within those few lines which demonstrate that Germanic people used some signs for oracular purposes. To know their fate, the officiant randomly picks three engraved logs and gathers them for interpretation. Just like légein in Greek or legere in Latin “to say,” lesen in German first meant “to gather, to assemble, to choose,” a meaning that’s still present in lesan in Anglo-Saxon, lesa in Norse, and galisan in Gothic. The phrase “while watching the skies” should also be underlined. Unfortunately, Tacitus doesn’t mention how many logs there were and whether the number was always the same. He mentions “signs” (notæ) and not letters (literæ), and he doesn’t elaborate on their nature or form either.
It is also tough to say which signs he was talking about beside runes and runic symbols (Begriffsrunen), especially since we now know that Tacitus’ description is contemporary to all the first known runic inscriptions.172 Many runologists acknowledge this, like Georg Baesecke, Arthur Mentz,173 Wolfgang Krause, Helmut Arntz, Karl Schneider, Ralph W. V. Elliott,174 Elmar Seebold,175 etc. “Tacitus clearly states that three signs were picked to be interpreted and many suggest that that number corresponds to the three ættir,” writes Bernard Mees, who thinks “it hard to see how Tacitus could point to something else than the runes.”176 “It is not absurd to assume that the oracular process could have had two roles in the formation of the Fuþark once it was picked up by the Germanic people,” writes Lucien Musset: “it could have influenced the order of the signs and it could have helped to choose the names of the signs since they seem so fitting, like *fehu ‘wealth,’ *wunjō ‘joy,’ or *nauþiz ‘distress,’ maybe because the runes looked like the notæ that had the same meaning and were used before them.”177
Tacitus didn’t go to Germania but he adapted the descriptions he could get his hands on. Pliny the Elder (23–79) probably knew the Germanic people better than him since he had served as a Roman officer in the Rhine region. Unfortunately, his book Germaniæ libri XX was lost, but it is likely that Tacitus had access to it when he wrote his book. The information Tacitus gives should also be compared with what is written about the ancient Germanic people by authors like Plutarch, Strabo, Suetonius, Livy or Ammianus Marcellinus. The divinatory process he talks of corresponds perfectly to what the Greek historian Herodotus wrote about the Scythians and the Alani. The random picking was also done by the Cimbri and the Suebi (Plutarch, Marius, 15, 4). Caesar reported that fate was consulted three times to decide what should happen to Valerius Procillus and Willibrod, two Romans that were captured by Germans, and every time the gods chose to let them live (De bello gallico, I, 53). Such tales are comparable to the Song of Hymir (Hymiskvida), collected in the Poetic Edda, where it reads: “Long ago the warlike divinities, / assemble to feast […] / threw their magical sticks / and examined the victim’s fate” (str. 1).
Consulting fate by using some signs engraved on pieces of wood seems also to have been done by the Italic people. In De divinatione (II, 85), Cicero evokes the different ways to consult fate, notably the oracles of Praeneste (sortes Prænestinæ). He writes:
The annals of Praeneste tell us that Numerius Suffustius, a respectable man from a noble family, dreamt several times that he was ordered in an increasingly threatening fashion to go to a specific location to carve rocks. Afraid, he obeyed despite the mocking from his fellow citizens and from the broken rocks came down pieces of oak-tree wood bearing antique characters (itaque perfracto saxo sortis erupisse in robore insculptas priscarum litterarum notis). That location is surrounded by an enclosure nowadays and dedicated to child Jupiter that can be seen there with Juno.
Later in the book, Cicero mentions again fate is consulted from “pieces of olive-tree wood.” He adds: “who brought the oak down, carved it and engraved characters?” That illusion is not negligible, especially since Cicero is talking about litteraræ notæ “written characters, letters,” and that sheds light on why Tacitus used the same word as well.178
In the 8th century, the Lex Frisionum still mentions the Germanic habit to consult fate by throwing “signs.” “Quæ sorte tales esse debent: duo tali de virga præcisi, quos tenos vocant, quorum unus signo crusis innotatur, alius purus dimittitur, et lana munda obvoluti super altare seu reliquias mittuntur” (XIII, 1). In Middle High German, zeichen (“sign”), which is derived from Old High German zeihhan, incidentally means “omen” (just like in Latin). In Charlemagne’s time, the Carolingian monk Hrabanus Maurus (776–859) who was the abbot of Fulda and archbishop of Mainz, evokes in his De inventione litterarum that the Marcomanni used “letters” (literas) for the purposes of divinatory invocations (cum quibus [literas] carmina sua incantationesque ac divinationes significare procurant, qui adhuc pagano ritu involvuntur). Another version uses the word runstabas instead of literas, but it could be a later text that was put under Hrabanus Maurus’ patronage in retrospect to give it more authority. In the 9th century, Rimbert’s Vita
Ansgari also mentions the “random pick.” Saxo Grammaticus (1150–1216) evokes in his history of Denmark (Gesta Danorum) about Hamlet (Amleth) “letters inscribed in wooden tables” (literas ligno insculptas). In the 11th century, the abbot Ælfric associates the runes with magic in one of his homilies: “thurh drýcræft oththe thurh rúnstafum,” “by magic or by the runes.”179
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“Magic” Vocabulary
Despite Anders Bæksted’s opinion,180 it seems to me that like Lucien Musset pointed out, some runic inscriptions in Old Fuþark were originally put in tombs. The fact that these mortuary deposits were out of people’s sight makes a case for them having a magico-religious character. That is the case of the Kylver stone’s inscription, which was part of the sepulcher’s funeral offerings, and beside a complete Fuþark, it also includes magical signs (seus), which more likely than not is meant to convey a spell. “The inscription is not meant to be read directly by the living, because aside the fact that it was put inside a tomb, it faces towards the earth,” underlines Alain Marez.181 It is also the case of the Noleby Runestone (Sweden, 6th century) found in 1894 in Västergötland, which has two graphic sequences that have not been deciphered, and the Eggja stone (Norway, 8th century), which was part of a tomb that was partially destroyed. The Eggja stone has the longest known inscription in Old Fuþark (120 runes long, forbidding people from unveiling the stone).
Some words present in runic inscriptions belong to the magic vocabulary on their own: auja, alu, laþu (laðu), laukaR, ota, eh(þ)u, etc. The meaning of the word alu, which can be found more than twenty times in inscriptions, in particular on the Elgesem runestone (Norway, 5th century), the amulets of Kinneved (Sweden, around 600) and Lindholmen (Sweden, 5th century), and the ring of Körlin (Poland, 6th century), remains unsettled. Some, like Sophus Bugge, link it to ealgian “to protect” in Old English and claim it means “defense, protection.” For phonological reasons, Gerd Høst prefers linking it to the name of the beer used for libations (Old Norse ol), especially since the olrunar were inscribed á horni “on a [drinking] horn.” Edgar C. Polomé, who shares this opinion, links the term to alýein “being outside one’s self” in Greek and to alwanzatar- “magic, witchcraft” in Hittite to claim that it means “ecstasy,” which leads
him to wonder whether “beer got its name from its primordial function in magico-religious purposes?”182
The Proto-Nordic term erilaR or ek erilaR (“me, the erilaR”) that can be found in some runic inscriptions was also a hot topic of debate. It can notably be on the amulet of Lindholmen — ek erilaR sāwīlagaR ha(i)teka — the Väsby bracteate, the Bratsberg fibula, the Järsberg Runestone, the Kragehul spear shaft, etc. Sophus Bugge believed it was the name of a runesmith that was part of the Heruli tribe (*erulāz), which was also the opinion of Wolfgang Krause and Helmut Arntz. Jacobsen and Moltke simply take it as the ethnic name of the Herules (eruli or Heruli in Latin, érouloi in Greek), a people we know little about beside that they more likely did not come from Denmark and were expelled by the Danes. From the 3rd to the 5th century, they spread across various region of Europe, from Gaul to Moravia and near the Black Sea.183 However, according to Otto Höfler, the Heruli were not exactly a people, but rather some kind of cultic aristocracy related to warlike mentoring (Kriegerverband) and involved Germanic people from several tribes, whose use of runes was both cryptic and religious.184 A member of that band of “Odinian” warriors allegedly served as an auxiliary in the Roman army and created runic writing from north Italic alphabets from the Alps. The term erilaR or irilaR then supposedly referred to a person versed in the ways to read and inscribe runes.185 Höfler mainly relied on the inscription C(enturia) Erul(i) on the Negau A helmet for his theory, which still continues to be widely discussed.186