¹ The most recent edition of the Old English Rune Poem, from which all quotations in the present paper come, is The Old English Rune Poem: a Critical Edition, ed. Halsall, M., McMaster Old English Stud, and Texts 2 (Toronto, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Halsall also gives a text of the Norwegian and Icelandic poems, based largely on the earlier editions of Wimmer, L. F. A., Die Runenschrift, trans. Holthausen, F. (Berlin, 1887)Google Scholar, and Dickins, B., Runic and Heroic Poems of the Old Teutonic Peoples (Cambridge, 1915)Google Scholar. All quotations from the three Rune Poems are taken from Halsall's edition, though the translations are my own.

² Heusler, A., Die altgermanische Dichtung, 2nd ed. (Potsdam, 1941), p. 89Google Scholar: ‘The few reminiscences of the Scandinavian rows…are explicable without hesitation as from an old primary form of the Migration Age, when Angeln and the Northern peoples were neighbours.’

³ Halsall, , The Old English Rune Poem, p. 38Google Scholar . It can hardly be denied, however, that 12 out of 29 stanzas (or 41%) in the Old English Rune Poem share conceptual similarities as well as rune names and alliterative formulae with their Norse counterparts. The 12 closely corresponding stanzas are those for feob, rad, hagl, nyd, is, ger, eoh, sigel, tir, beorc, man and lagu in the Old English poem.

⁴ Poems of Wisdom and Learning in Old English, ed. and trans. Shippey, T A. (Cambridge and Totowa, NJ, 1976)Google Scholar. Another book on wisdom poetry in Old English, Hansen, E.T., The Solomon Complex: Reading Wisdom in Old English Poetry (Toronto, 1988)Google Scholar, was unavailable to me while writing this article.

⁵ On the date and condition of the now lost fol. ‘165’ from London, British Library, Cotton Otho B. x, see Ker, N.R., Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957), pp. 224–30Google Scholar and Page, R.I., ‘Anglo-Saxon Texts in Early Modern Transcripts’, Trans. of the Cambridge Bibliographical Soc. 6 (1973), 69–85Google Scholar. For details of the Norwegian and Icelandic manuscripts, see Wimmer, , Die Runenschrift, trans. Holthausen, pp. 275–88Google Scholar; Dickins, , Runic and Heroic Poems, pp. 6–8Google Scholar; and Kålund, K., Småstykker, 2 vols. (Copenhagen, 1884) I, 1–16.Google Scholar

⁶ See Derolez, R., Runica Manuscripta: the English Tradition (Bruges, 1954), pp. 78–83.Google Scholar

⁷ For a summary of these views, see Halsall, , The Old English Rune Poem, pp. 4–6Google Scholar and references cited in n. 16 (pp. 65–6).

⁸ For the connection between the Rune Poems and mnemonics, see Dickins, , Runic and Heroic Poems, p. vGoogle Scholar; Page, R.I., An Introduction to English Runes (London, 1973), p. 73Google Scholar; and Halsall, , The Old English Rune Poem, p. 33Google Scholar. On the use of fólgin nöfn in rímur, see Olason, P. E., ‘Fólgin nöfn i rímum’, Skírnir 89 (1915), 118–32.Google Scholar

⁹ See further on this point Howe, N., The Old English Catalogue Poems, Anglistica 23 (Copenhagen, 1985).Google Scholar

¹⁰ On the þpulur lists, see Ross, M. Clunies, Sk´ldskaparmál: Snorri Sturluson's Ars poetica and Medieval Theories of Language, The Viking Collection 4 (Odense, 1987), 80–96Google Scholar. On the general importance of listing as a technique for ordering knowledge in newly literate societies, see Goody, J., The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 74–111.Google Scholar

¹¹ Amory, F., ‘Things Greek and the Riddarasögur’, Speculum 59 (1984), 509–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹² On the importance of the encyclopedic tradition in this regard, see Howe, , The Old English Catalogue Poems, pp. 29–72Google Scholar for Old English, and Ross, Clunies, Skäldskaparmäl, pp. 151–73Google Scholar for Old Norse, especially Snorri's Edda.

¹³ Halsall, , The Old English Rune Poem, p. 37Google Scholar. A similar view is expressed by Osborn, M. and Longland, S., ‘A Celtic Intruder in the Old English Rune Poem’, Neuphilologische Mitteiltungen 81 (1980), 385.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Halsall, , The Old English Rune Poem, p. 35Google Scholar. Cf., for example, Finnur Jónsson's opinion that ‘there is most often no connection of thought between the verse's two lines’ (my translation) in Den oldnorske ogoldislandske littaraturs historic, 3 vols., 2nd ed. (Copenhagen, 1920–1924) II, 31Google Scholar. This view has been partially refuted, as I mention later, by Liestøl, A., ‘Det norske runediktet’, Maal og Minne (1948), 65–71.Google Scholar

¹⁵ See Þórólfsson, B.K., ‘Dróttkvæði og rímur’, Skírnir 124 (1950), 175–209.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Cf. Frank, R., ‘Skaldic Poetry’, in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: a Critical Guide, Islandica 45 (Ithaca, NY, and London, 1985), 160.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Sólarljóð: Tyding og Tolkningsgrunnlag, ed. Fidjestøl, B. (Bergen, Oslo and Tromsø, 1979)Google Scholar, and Amory, F., ‘Norse-Christian Syncretism and interpretatio cbristiana in Sólarljóð’, The Sixth International Saga Conference: Workshop Papers, 2 vols. (Copenhagen, 1985) I, 1–25Google Scholar. The date of Sólarljóð is uncertain, though the period just before or after 1200 has been suggested by Paasche, F., Kristendom og kvad: En studie i norren middelalder (Oslo 1914)Google Scholar, repr. in his Hedenskap og kristendom: Studier i norren middelalder (Oslo, 1948), pp. 206–8.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Page, , An Introduction to English Runes, p. 70.Google Scholar

¹⁹ By, among others, Halsall, , The Old English Rune Poem, pp. 40–2Google Scholar, and Heusler, , Die altgermanische Dichtung, p. 88.Google Scholar

²⁰ The three stanzas are as follows:

²¹ Snorri Sturluson gives rógmalmr as one of his exemplary kennings for the referent gold (Skáldskaparmál, ch. 47; Edda Snorra Sturlusonar, ed. Jónsson, F. (Copenhagen, 1931), p. 128)Google Scholar and explains it by means of the myth of the Æsir and the ransom they paid for killing Otter, which he follows immediately with the narrative of the Niflung gold. The leitmotif of each narrative is selfish hoarding of wealth. Otherwise, róg as a base word of gold kennings occurs only in Bjarkamál's róg Niflunga, a text likewise preserved for us in Snorri's Edda: Edda Snorra Sturlusonar, ed. Jónsson, , p. 143.Google Scholar

²² Edda Snorra Sturlusonar, ed. Jónsson, , pp. 128–34Google Scholar; trans. Faulkes, A., Snorri Sturluson Edda (London and Melbourne, 1987), pp. 100–6.Google Scholar

²³ A clear Norse articulation of the forest as a zone of the asocial and animal is Vqlsunga saga, ed. Finch, R.G. (London and Edinburgh, 1965), pp. 6–14 (chs. 5–8).Google Scholar

²⁴ The Old English Maxims II expresses this nexus succinctly, especially in lines 17b–18a, ‘Wulf sceal on bearowe,/earm anhaga’ (‘The wolf must be in the forest, wretched and solitary’), and 26b–27a, ‘Draca sceal on hæwe,/frod, frætwum wlanc’ (‘A dragon must live in a barrow, old and proud of his treasures’); text and translation from Shippey, , Poems of Wisdom and Learning, pp. 76–7.Google Scholar

²⁵ Halsall, (The Old English Rune Poem, pp. 35–7)Google Scholar finds only one unambiguously Christian reference in the Norwegian poem and no Christian material at all in the Icelandic text, but ignores the possibility that the non-Christian material in both poems may be subject to an interpretatio Christiana, as I argue here.

²⁶ Edda Snorra Sturlusonar, ed. Jónsson, , pp. 247–50Google Scholar; trans. Faulkes, , Snorri Sturluson Edda, pp. 211–17.Google Scholar

²⁷ Edda Snorra Sturlusonar, ed. Jónsson, , pp. 221–2Google Scholar (I have italicised the two abutted lines in each helmingr of the Icelandic text); trans Faulkes, , Snorri Sturluson Edda, p. 175.Google Scholar

²⁹ There is a close verbal and conceptual parallel here with the sun-stanzas of Sólarljóð (39–45) and especially with stanza 41, in which the dying seer bows to the sun: ‘sól ek sá,/svá þótti mér,/sem ek sæja goqfgan Guð,/henni ek laut/(h)inzta sinni/aldaheimi i’ (‘I saw the sun, so it seemed to me, as if I beheld worshipful God. I bowed to her, for the last time in the world of men’): Sólarljóð, ed. Fidjestøl, , p. 65Google Scholar; see also his discussion of these stanzas on pp. 43–6. Amory, (‘Norse-Christian Syncretism and interpretatio Christiana in Sólarljóð’, pp. 4–8)Google Scholar argues that this stanza may represent a syncretistic blend of pagan sun worship with Christian symbolism associated with Christ as sol iustitiae and sol salutis. There seems little persuasive evidence to support the notion of pagan sun worship, however. Much more likely is Liestøl's suggestion that the Norwegian poet was thinking here of the visual clue that connects the Christian who bends his knees to worship the deity or one of His symbols and the shape of one version of the s-rune, which, according to the Third Grammatical Treatise was called kne'sól in Old Icelandic; see Liestøl, , ‘Det norske runediktet’, p. 68Google Scholar and references given there.

³⁰ Text and translation from Turville-Petre, E.O.G., Scaldic Poetry (Oxford, 1976), p. 46Google Scholar. See further, for comment on Kormakr's hjástælt technique, Frank, R., Old Norse Court Poetry: the Dróttkvætt Stanza, Islandica 42 (Ithaca NY, and London, 1978), 107–19.Google Scholar

³¹ The three references to myth and legend come in stanzas 5 (Reginn), 10 (Froði) and 13 (Loki), with stanza 3's allusion to women's diseases caused by a giant (þurs) as a possible fourth, though here both the rune-name and the hjástælt line are involved; the two Christian allusions are in stanzas 7 and 11.

³² Edda Snorra Sturlusonar, ed. Jónsson, , pp. 135–6.Google Scholar

³³ Snorri's historical synchronisation of events from Nordic prehistory and Christian theory in the Froði passage have recently been discussed by G.W. Weber, ‘Intelkgere historiam. Typological perspectives of Nordic prehistory (in Snorri, Saxo, Widukind and others)’, Tradition og historieskrivning, ed. Hastrup, K. and Sorensen, P.M., Acta Jutlandica 63.2, Humanistisk serie 61 (Aarhus, 1987), 95–142Google Scholar. Weber also discusses and exemplifies typological parallels in the visual arts of medieval Scandinavia. More recently still, Klaus von See has argued against this position because, in his view, it over-theologizes Old Norse literature; see his Mythos und Theologie im skandinavischen Hochmittelalter, Skandinavistische Arbeiten 8 (Heidelberg, 1989 for 1988), esp. 106–11.Google Scholar

³⁴ Edda Snorra Sturlusonar, ed. Jónsson, , pp. 5–8Google Scholar; trans. Faulkes, , Snorri Sturluson Edda, pp. 27–9.Google Scholar

³⁵ Dickins, , Runic and Heroic Points, p. 27.Google Scholar

³⁶ Edda Snorra Sturlusonar, ed. Jónsson, , pp. 63–8Google Scholar; trans. Faulkes, , Snorri Sturluson Edda, pp. 48–51.Google Scholar

³⁷ Liestøl, , ‘Det norske runediktet’, pp. 65–71, esp. 67–9Google Scholar, on the visual associations of the shapes of the runes themselves.

³⁸ Cf. Meissner, R., Die Kenningar der Skalden: ein Beitrag zur skaldischen Poetik (Bonn and Leipzig, 1921), p. 2Google Scholar: ‘Die einfache Kenning ist also ein zweigliedriger Ersatz für ein Substantivum der gewöhnlkhen Rede.’

³⁹ Ibid. p 103.

⁴⁰ Den norske-islandke Skjaldedigtning B. Rettet tekst, ed. Jónsson, F., 2 vols. (Copenhagen, 1912–1915) II, 261 (stanza XI, line 3)Google Scholar. For an idea of the probable date of this stanza I am indebted to Rory McTurk (pers. comm.). The stanza in question purports to be the utterance of a trémðdr, a moss-covered wooden icon of an earlier age, forty ells high, who complains that ‘the weeping of the clouds’ falls upon him in his nakedness; cf. Hávamál 49 for a comparable idea. An interesting, punning confirmation of the Icelandic Rune Poem's sense of the rune-name úr comes from a Norwegian runic inscription from c. 1100; see Hagland, J.R., ‘Ljóðaháttr og landlege. Runeinnskrift i verseform fra Esøya i Vevelstad’, Festskrift til Ludvig Holm-Olsen, ed. Fidjestøl, B. et al. (Øvre Ervik, 1984), pp. 106–13.Google Scholar

⁴¹ This association is well attested from Scandinavian popular terms for childhood diseases into modern times; cf. Reichborn-Kjennerud, I., Vår gamle trolldomsmedisin, Skrifter utg. av Det norske Videnskaps-Akademi i Oslo, 5 vols. (Oslo, 1927–1947) II, 116 and 143.Google Scholar

⁴² For the uses of reið in verse, see Lexicon Poeticum Antiquæ Linguæ Septentrionalis: Ordbog over det norsk-islandske Skjaldesprog, ed. Egilsson, S., rev. Jónsson, F., 2nd ed. (Copenhagen, 1931), pp. 460–1Google Scholar, and Edda: die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern. Kurzes Wörterbuch, ed. Kuhn, H. (Heidelberg, 1968), p. 166Google Scholar. ‘Ride, riding’ is sense 1 of reið in Ordbog over det gamle norske Sprog, ed. Fritzner, J., 4th ed., 3 vols. (Oslo, Bergen and Tromsø, 1973) III, 51Google Scholar. The compound ióreið (cognate with OE eored) occurs once in eddic verse in Helgakuiða Hundingsbana 1, 48/7, in the sense ‘troop of riders’.

⁴³ Many gnomic texts in English and Norse reveal a tension between the advantages, social, economic and military, of horse-riding to men and the concomitant risks, especially if the horse is not properly shod or broken in; cf. Maxims I, A 63–64a and C 4–5 (Poems of Wisdom and Learning in Old English, ed. Shippey, , pp. 66–7 and 70–1)Google Scholar; and Hávamál 89–90 (ed. Evans, D. (London, 1986), p. 57)Google Scholar. The Old English Rune Poem's stanza turns on a contrast between the armchair traveller's and an actual rider's perspective, while the Norwegian and Icelandic poems contrast the horse's hard work with the pleasure and speed of the rider. I can see no support for the often-raised hypothesis that the Old English poet may have been punning on two other possible senses of rod. Neither has ever been independently attested, as Dobbie (ASPR 6, 154) and Halsall, (The Old English Rune Poem, p. 112)Google Scholar have both argued.

⁴⁴ Page, , An Introduction to English Runes, p. 81.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ It is worth noting here that there was a frequent etymological association between Stella and the verb stare in the writings of the Latin encyclopedists (e.g. Isidore, Etym. III. lxxi.3), which is reproduced in the Old English of Byrhtferth's Manual, ed. Crawford, S. J., EETS os 177 (London, 1928), 128, lines 7–8Google Scholar: ‘þa steorran synt gecweden þurh heora stede, forðon hig synd fæste on þære heofene’ (‘the stars derive their name from their stability, because they are fixed in the heaven’). Such an idea may also have influenced the formulation of the Old English tir stanza.

⁴⁶ Homilies of Ælfric: a Supplementary Collection, ed. Pope, J.C., 2 vols., EETS 259–60 (London, 1967–1968), 687Google Scholar. See further, for both Old English and Old Norse writings on this subject, Ross, Clunies, Skáldskaparmál, pp. 169–72.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Edda Snorra Sturlusonar, ed. Jónsson, p. 86Google Scholar; trans. Faulkes, , Snorri Sturluson Edda, p. 64.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Guðrúnarkvða qnnor 11/14 (Edda: die Lieder des Codex Regius, ed. Kuhn, H., 5th ed. (Heidelberg, 1983), p. 225).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Meissner, , Die Kenningar der Skalden, pp. 371–2.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Comparable reconstructions of the pagan past in terms of the Christian present are widespread in Old Norse literature. A well known example is the description of pórólfr Mostrarskegg's bof in Eyrbyggia saga, ch. 4, where every detail is paralleled by a characteristic of a Christian church: Eyrbyggia saga, ed. ÓSveinsson, E. and Þórðarson, M., Islenzk Fornrit 4 (Reykjavík, 1935), 7–10.Google Scholar