The Icelandic Rune-PoemThe text commonly called the Icelandic rune-poem is only a poem by courtesy. Itconsists of a series of stanzas of common pattern. Each is a single sentence, its subjectone of the runes of the sixteen-letter futhark. There follow three groups of periphrases orkennings defining, or alluding to, the rune-name. For this reason the form has been calledfrrideilur, 'three parts, triads' (at any rate as early as 1627 when Arngrimur Jonsson definedthe term: prydeylur, qvasi triplices expositiones),' though that begs the question too, as Ihope to show. Here, for convenience, I shall use the more common English appellation, theIcelandic rune-poem. This work survives in two quite early manuscripts, AM 687d 4° andAM 461 12° as well as a number of later ones, and there are texts of and quotations fromit in seventeenth-century printed books. There are at least four modern editions of thepoem, those of Kalund, Wimmer, Lindroth and Dickins.2The Two Earliest ManuscriptsAM 687d 4°, now in the Stofnun Arna Magnussonar, Reykjavik, is dated c. 1500. Itis a single bifolium, measuring roughly 145mm x 200mm, and bearing additional traces ofhorizontal and vertical folding, presumably for ease of carrying, that are likely to pre-dateArni Magnusson's ownership. Arni had the bifolium bound and titled 'Galldrastafer',which indicates his attitude to the material. In 1892 the official catalogue of the1. Jakob Benediktsson, Ole Worm's correspondence with Icelanders (Bibliotheca ArnamagnBeana vii, K0benhavn,1948), p. 5. Cf. the Thrydeilur of Ole Worm, runer seu Danica literature! antiquissima (Amsterdam, 1636), p. 95.
One difficulty with the term frrideilur is that eighteenth-century writers on runes used it in a quite different sense;to define the division of the futhark into three attir. Early runologists also \\stedfininideilur, nideilur and variousother numbers of kennings in a verse, but also tvideilur by which they referred to the Norwegian rune-poem,whose stanzas are of two lines linked by rhyme. Throughout this paper I use the terms 'kenning' and 'paraphrase'interchangeably and in the most general sense, rather than make subtle distinctions as some of my colleagues havedone.
2. Kr. Kalund, *Et gammel-norsk rune-rim og nogle islandske rune-remser', Smdstykker 1-16 (Samfund tiludgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur xiii, K0benhavn, 1884-91), pp. 1-21, with a supplement and somecomments by S. Bugge, pp. 100-113; Ludv. F. A. Wimmer, Die Runenschrift, trans. F. Holthausen (Berlin, 1887),pp. 275-88; Hjalmar Lindroth, 'Studier over de nordiska dikterna om runornas namn', Arkiv for nordisk fllologi,xxix (n. s. xxv) (1913), 256-95; Bruce Dickins, Runic and heroic poems of the old Teutonic peoples (Cambridge,1915), pp. 28-33. For completeness I mention here the text printed by Maureen Halsall, The Old English RunePoem: a critical edition (McMaster Old English Studies and Texts ii, Toronto, 1981), pp. 183-6, which isconfessedly based on those of Wimmer and Dickins. Of the Icelandic and Norwegian rune-poems Jonna LouisJensen comments: 'Digtene er udgivet flere gange, men en definitiv tekst er stadig ikke etableret' [there are severaleditions of the poems, but no definitive text has yet been established], 'Norrane navnegader', Nordica Bergensia,iv(1994), 35-52 at p. 41.

Nottingham Medieval Studies xlii (1998)

R. I. PAGE

Arnamagnean Library, Copenhagen, listed its contents as: 1) f. Ir, Latin prayers to Mary,2) f. Iv, the Icelandic rune-poem, 3) ff. lv-2r, cryptic alphabets, 4) f. 2r, the rune-names withLatin glosses upon them, 5) f. 2v, Latin exorcisms and prayers.' This agrees with Kalund'saccount in his edition of the Icelandic rune-poem, though there he paginates (1-4) ratherthan foliating,4 and Wimmer concurs in his edition of the verses, citing only pp. 2-3,'Lindroth's detailed presentation of later variant texts of the poem gives but the sketchiestaccount of AM 687d 4°; indeed he admits (though only in a footnote) that he did notexamine either of the two earlier manuscripts/' Dickins simply mentions the manuscripts inpassing. 7Whatever was the case in the earlier years of this century, when I first saw AM 687d4°, in 1993, it no longer had the form that Kalund defined. At some time or other thebifolium had been turned inside out and refolded so that pp. 4, 1 (ff. 2v, Ir) held the runepoem and related material (items 2-4), and pp. 2, 3 (ff. Iv, 2r) the Latin religious texts. Thisarrangement is consonant with the secondary, pre-Arni, folding which made themanuscript a convenient size for keeping in the pocket. By this the empty lower half ofKalund f. 2r formed the outside, and consequently became very scuffed and dirtied.
However, the arrangement does not make sense of the bifolium itself, so it is likely that theformat defined by Kalund is the one the scribe intended.
A series of photographs taken in 71963 and preserved in the Arnamagnean Institute,Copenhagen, gives the individual pages, with the bifolium, apparently taken from itsbinding, placed flat. After this, however, the manuscript was rebound in its Kalund order.
The incorrect formatting based on the evidence of the secondary folding seems to havetaken place during conservation in 1980 when the manuscript was prepared for sending toIceland. It has now been corrected, and the rune-poem again occupies f. Iv.
Clearly there has been some tampering with the sheet over the years, and this maycast light on a dark subject, the changing condition of this important and in some respectsunique presentation of the Icelandic commentary on the rune-names. At present f. Iv is inmany places hard, even impossible to read, and it is a matter of speculation whether earlier

3. Kr. Kalund. Katiilog over den Arnamiigiiitunskc Haiidikriftsiimling (Kobenhavn, 1888-94). no. 1717.
4. 'Et gammel-norsk rune-rim'. 17-18.
5. Rimenschrift. p. 282.
6. 'Dikterna om runornas namn'. 257; also 'De bada hdskr. 687 och 461. some noggrannt iiro undersokta avbade Kalund och Wimmer. bar jag ej sjalv undersokt, utun liimnar uppgifterna efter desse' [I have not myselfexamined the two manuscripts 687 and 461. which were looked at in detail by both Kalund and Wimmer. I havetaken my information from them]. 276. note 1.
1. Runic mill lici'oic /xii'iii.',. p. 8.

THE ICELANDIC RUNE-POEM

editors could see much more than we can now, whether the condition of this page hasdeclined a good deal since the opening decades of this century, perhaps in connection withthe refolding and rebinding. Dr Peter Springborg, Director of the Arnamagnean Institute,thinks this unlikely, since Institute policy on conservation has always been veryconservative. He suggests (personal communication) that nineteenth-century scholars mayhave applied reagents to make the text more easily visible, and that these have in the enddarkened the parchment. This is possible - apparently Kalund received permission to usereagent on Arnamagnean manuscripts though AM 687d 4° is not among those listed; butthe general appearance of the parchment does not suggest to me the application ofreagent, though the occasional line of writing may have been so treated.
Unfortunately none of the early editors gave a detailed account of the manuscript'sstate. Kalund contented himself with saying: 'desvaerre er skriften pa en del af dette partinassten helt bortslidt' [alas, the text on part of this section is almost entirely rubbed away],and recording individual sequences that he found ukeselige [illegible]. In a generalisationWimmer agreed with Kalund: 'Die handschrift ist indessen an mehreren stellen sehrundeutlich oder sogar ganz unleserlich und muss also mit hulfe der iibrigen texte erganztwerden, deren abweichende lesarten im iibrigen nur angefiihrt werden, wo sie einigebedeutung haben' [In several places the manuscript is very unclear or even illegible, and sohas to be supplemented from the other texts, whose variant readings are moreover citedonly where they have any significance]. He also reported bits that were unleserlich, usually(though not always) agreeing with Kalund; indeed, there must be suspicion that hisreadings were strongly influenced by Kalund's. There is no indication that Dickins eversaw the manuscript (indeed I do not think he did), contenting himself with saying thatoccasional readings were 'illegible in 687'; there are now many more illegible passages thanhe cited.
At present the page bearing the rune-poem is badly rubbed and blackened in places,so that only the first line can be read with any ease. Parts of text in the obscured areas canbe made out using the microscope, parts with the help of ultra-violet light, and parts evenby using back-lighting. What can be seen in natural light varies a good deal according tothe nature of the light and its direction. But there still remain bits of the poem that todayare unreadable. In general these correspond to Kalund's illegible sequences, but there areparts he could read and I cannot (for instance, the opening of stanza 13), and vice versa.
The excellent photograph taken under ultra-violet light in 71963 is of immense help (notetoo other prints from 71963, 71977) but even that leaves some details obscure. More mightbecome accessible by using new techniques of lighting and recording.
The matter is of some importance in more general runic studies. For example, thename of the final rune in the Norse/Icelandic futhark is expounded in all four moderneditions of the Icelandic rune-poem: y (yr) er bendr bogi, 'y is a bent bow'. Wimmer,Kalund and Lindroth admitted this passage could not be read in MS AM 687d 4° Dickins

R. I. PAGE

was silent on the point. At present it is certainly largely unreadable, even under ultra-violetlight; indeed, the rune-form itself that opens the verse can be detected only with somedifficulty. This passage is one where the ultra-violet light photograph is of little help. Yetthe identification of the rune-name yr as 'bow' depends on this verse, and that translationmay be significant in explaining the name of the Old English rune yr* The othercomparatively early manuscript of the Icelandic rune-poem, the sixteenth-century AM 46112°, omits this letter altogether, so it is no help. To get such a reading as bendr bogi we mustconsult early modern sources. For instance, in 1627 Arngrimur Jonsson quoted the verseas yr er bendur bogielBardaga gagnloc fyfvu flyter. 9 Or there are later adaptations of thetext, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century ones written up by antiquaries such as JonOlafsson, though these often differ in detail from the earlier versions and are likely to beunreliable guides. 10 They have readings for this passage of Benttur Bogj, tvibendtr bogi,tvibentr bogi and so on. Clearly it is likely that bendr bogi is not far off the mark for theillegible AM 687d 4°. Yet the full material needs to be adduced.
Another weakness of existing editions is that their editors made no attempt todefine the lay-out of the rune-poem in AM 687d 4° (or in other manuscripts, as for that)though it may throw useful light on the Hickes text of the Old English rune-poem.'' Thesixteen Scandinavian rune-names are defined in sixteen lines, each beginning with the formbut not the name of a letter in the mixed or 'older Norwegian' runic futhark.' : Thus therune graphs stand discretely in vertical line down the left-hand side of the page, as indeedin the Hickes printing of the Old English poem. AM 461 12° does not have the same layout, for it does not include the graphs; instead each verse begins with the rune-name. Thetext is not set out formally in individual lines, each treating a single rune, though there is

8. Cf. the statement in R. I. Page, Introduction to English nines (London. 1973), p. 85, who ought to have knownbetter. There is a discussion of the name's meaning in Halsall, Old English Rune Poem. pp. 156-7. In this mattersome of the studies of Cynewult's runic signatures might be useful, if scholars could only agree on theirsignification.
9. Jakob Benediktsson, Ole Worm's correspondence, p. 5. Arngrimur translates the verse. IT est Bendur i.e.
tetensus. Bogie i. e. arcus: Bardaga i. c. militia!, gagn i. e. coimnoditas: fyfvu i. e. teli flvter \'el fleitirlid est delator rclfestinator. Cf. also Worm, runeR, p. 95:y er ben^uR bogie, barbaga gagn, og fifvu flytiR which he translates,arcus intensus, militia' commoditas. teli delator.

10. Below, pp. 19-22. There is also AM 687d 4°'s Latin translation of the rune-name, arc-its, to be considered, butagain the validity of such Latin additions needs to be examined. Other texts of the Icelandic rune-poem showthey are not primary: below, pp. 8. 3211. R. I. Page, 'Anglo-Saxon texts in early modern transcripts'. Transactions of the Cambridge BibliographicalSociety, vi, 2 (1973), 69-75, discussing George Hempl, 'Hickes's additions to the Runic Poem", Modern Philology.
i(1903). 135-41.
12. As given in Magnus Olsen et a!.. Norges innskrifler mad de yngre ru/ier (Oslo, 1941- ), v, 243, though with,just visible under ultra-violet light, a doubled form of the final rune.

THE ICELANDIC RUNE-POEM

some suggestion that was once planned as we shall see. Probably AM 687d 4° has theoriginal format here, but it needs explicating. Such weaknesses as these in the earliereditions justify this further attempt at presenting the Icelandic rune-poem.

1. The AM 687d 4° (hereafter = A) text: f. Iv, 11. 1-16. (Plate 1)

Abbreviated words/syllables are rendered in italic (which cannot be more than ageneral indication since the scribe was inconsistent in writing out the forms of someendings). Letters and groups which the scribe omitted in error or through lack of space aresupplied within angled brackets < >. Letter sequences that cannot now be identified areinserted, for convenience of reading, within square brackets [ ] , on the evidence either ofthe available space or of related texts. Such added readings have, of course, little authorityfor the A version of the poem. The convention [....] indicates that the reading cannot besupplied 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 - whetheru or v, d or d is intended, for instance. In such cases I have perhaps rather arbitrarilychosen one graph or the other. It is sometimes hard to determine whether the scribeintended a space between adjacent words or not, and again my practice here is inevitablyarbitrary. Stops (raised points, colons) are not always easy to distinguish from chancemarks on the parchment surface. Rune forms are here given their conventionaltransliterations in bold characters.
(1)

f er franda rog ok flasdar viti ok g[ralfseids gataAuruw fy<l>ker(2)

u er skygia gratur ok sksra buer[rir ok] hirdis hatrVmbre • Visi(3)b er kuen«a ku9l ok kleita ibui ok [..Jlrunar veRSat[ur]nus. pei«gill(4)

o er alldingautr ok asg[ar]dz iofjur ok vjalhallar visiJupi[ter] Oddviti(5)

r er sitiandi sela ok snudig ferd ok iors erfidiIte<r> • Rcesir(6)

k er barna baul ok bardagi ok h[o]ldfuahus.
Flag[...] [k]ongwr