The Old Norwegian Rune Poem

The Norwegian rune poem, called Rúnakvæði in Norse, gives one couplet to each of the sixteen runes of the Younger Futhark, in the traditional order from f to ʀ. The first line of each couplet names the rune and says something about the thing it denotes. The second line rhymes with it but usually has nothing to do with it: a wolf in the woods, Reginn forging a sword, a hawk's claw. Some scholars think these second lines were mnemonic fillers. Others look for hidden links. Dickins described the couplets as six-syllable lines, two loosely connected gnomic statements per stanza, with alliteration in the first line and end-rhyme between the pair.

The poem's manuscript was a law book in the University Library at Copenhagen, and it burned in the city fire of 1728. Ole Worm had already printed the poem, in runes, in 1636. Árni Magnússon and Jón Eggertsson made more careful copies in the later 17th century, and Kristian Kålund's edition of 1884–91 was based on their transcripts. The text has problems. The óss stanza is a syllable short in Worm's version and has been emended. Dickins kept Kålund's emendation of barna bǫlvan in the kaun stanza.

The language is Norwegian, not Icelandic. The alliteration of ræið with rossom in stanza 5 only works with Norwegian forms (Icelandic has reið and hrossum), a point Dickins took from earlier editors. The poem names Christ as creator (stanza 7) and bows to "the holy judgement" (11), but it also mentions Týr, Loki, Reginn and the legendary Danish king Fróði. Its rune names are the standard medieval Norse ones: fé, úr, þurs, óss, reið, kaun, hagall, nauðr, íss, ár, sól, Týr, bjarkan, maðr, lǫgr, ýr. Several of its lines match the Old English poem (hail as "the coldest grain") and the Icelandic poem (wealth as "strife of kinsmen", man as "increase of the dust"), so the three probably draw on a shared stock of rune lore.

The poem

Text after Dickins (1915), pp. 24–27, in the normalised Old Norwegian spelling Dickins took from Wimmer, Die Runenschrift (1887), following Kålund's critical edition (Smaastykker, 1884–91). Translation ours.