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the Runic Poems
5

memory of Gorm his father and Thyre his mother, that Hamld who conquered all Denmark and Norway and christianised the Danes.)

From the beginning of the eleventh century, however, the alphabet was supplemented by the so-called "dotted runes" (stungim k, i, t, b = g, e, d. p).

The later Runic alphabet was known in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, the Faroes, the Orkneys, Man and England, in every part of the Scandinavian world; even in the South of Russia an inscription has been found. In Denmark there are something less than 200 inscriptions, few of which are later than 1150; in Sweden there are nearer 2000, some of which can scarcely be earlier than the fifteenth century. Scandinavian also in language and in character are the inscriptions from the Orkneys and Man. In England, too, there are a few relics of the Danish conquest, such as the sculptured stone in the library at St Paul's (c. 1030) and the Þorfastr comb from Lincoln in the British Museum[1].

In Norway and Iceland, however, the Runic alphabet is never found on monumental stones of the Viking Age, though it was used commonly enough for other purposes. The later Norwegian inscriptions date from the period 1050-1350, the Icelandic are not earlier than the thirteenth century. Generally speaking we may say that the Runic alphabet, always connected more or less with magical practices, fell under the suspicion of witchcraft in the Scandinavian countries and perished in the great outburst of superstitious terror which followed the establishment of the reformed religion, though there is some little evidence to show that in Sweden it lingered on into the nineteenth century[2].

  1. ↑ The Bridekirk font (Cumberland) bears a twelfth century English inscription in the Scandinavian Runic characters of that time with a few additional letters borrowed from the Anglo-Saxon book-hand.
  2. ↑ There is not much evidence for the magic use of runes in this country. Bede (H.E. iv. 22) tells the story of a Northumbrian noble captive to the Mercians at the battle of the Trent (679), whose chains were mysteriously loosened whenever his brother, who thought him dead, celebrated masses for the repose of his soul. His gaoler in ignorance asked him whether he had
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