The Celts and the Origin of the Runic Script

Studia Neophilologica 71: 143–155, 1999

The Celts and the Origin of the Runic Script BERNARD MEES

The Germanic runes are usually stated to have their origin in an adaptation of a Mediterranean script: Etruscan, Greek or Latin.1A Latin origin for the runic script (known as the fuþark, after the first six characters of the runic script as represented on the Kylver stone), as was most influentially formally propounded by Ludvig Wimmer,2 suggested the likelihood that the runes were adapted or evolved from the Latin ABC through mercantile contacts in the region of the Rhenish or Danubian frontier. A similar method of adoption from an eastern Greek alphabet, as was subsequently suggested by Sophus Bugge, has lost favour owing to the emphasis of Bugge and Otto von Friesen3 on the Black Sea Goths as the tribe most likely to have adopted the characters of the Greek world. The Etruscan or rather the descendent North Italic alphabets, as was suggested by Carl Marstrander and Magnus Hammarstro¨m,4 are often considered to be more similar orthographically to the runic script, and boustrophedon and sinistroverse runic inscriptions also point towards a North Italic influence as many of the Italic inscriptions are executed from right to left. A convincing historical argument as to the date and method of adoption of the fuþark, however, has yet to appear. The North Italic thesis is hampered by the fact that the first runic finds in the south of Germania appear later than do those of the north, not dating before the fifth century A.D.5 Marstrander and before him Holger Pedersen suggested that Celtic tribes might have acted as intermediaries in the centuries about the birth of Christ, whether from North Italic or Roman sources. Yet although the North Italic thesis once received widespread support among runologists, the only widely accepted attempt to explain the agency of transmission granted a North Italic source was influenced by the Negau B inscription and the idea of Alpengermanen in the second century B.C., generally regarded now as a myth.6 Another theory that has endeavoured to explain the transmission of writing from south to north is the Cimbrian thesis that seeks to link the acquisition of the runic script with the return north of defeated Cimbri and Teutones after the Roman victory at the Vercellae in 101 B.C.7 Although linked in its original proposition to the North Italic thesis, it could also be applied to an origin theory founded on any other script used in a region through which the Cimbri wandered. The southward journeying of these people, probably from northern Jutland, is often linked to importation from the south as a reflux movement enabled by the opening of the southern frontier.8 The departure of the Cimbri is an early turning point in Germanic history, as it first introduced the furor Teutonicus to the Mediterranean region, but contact with the south had been occurring since the Bronze Age, and despite a contraction in trade at the time of the fall of the Late Halstatt Fu¨rstensitze, north-south links had been reopened before the time of the departure of the Cimbri.9 Early Greek explorers such as Pytheas had visited or heard of Germanic tribes two centuries prior to the southern irruption of the Cimbri, although it was not until the appearance of the ethnography of Poseidonios that the term Germani was applied to these people.10 Cimbrian theses are merely historical crutches used to provide a defined event to illustrate the beginning of many different north-south relations that were already burgeoning before the Cimbri irrupted so violently into Mediterranean history. Until the discovery of the Meldorf fibula inscription in 1979, the earliest of the over 200 runic finds in the older fuþark were usually dated to the late second century A.D., a century before the Goths arrived at the Black Sea shores. Even so, datings for early finds such as the Øvre Stabu spearhead (unearthed in 1890) were somewhat controversial until a proper absolute (vis-a`-vis relative) archaeological chronology for the Iron Age was developed

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after the war, a lemma that explains why the thesis of a Gothic adoption of Greek letters was maintained by Gunnar Ekholm, a prominent Scandinavian archaeologist, as late as 1959.11 A modified eastern thesis replacing the Goths with the earlier eastern Germanic Bastarnae or Quadi remains a possibility, however, and Greek letters were in use in Gaul from the third to first centuries B.C. Nevertheless, von Friesen’s Greek theory relied on cursive Greek, not the epigraphical letters typical of pre-Roman Gaul. Yet a Greek origin is still maintained by runologists who seek runic origins in pre-classical times, and it is clear that many imports into the Germanic North come from eastern sources, as is evidenced by finds such as the famous Thraco-Celtic cauldron from Gundestrup and the standard measure of Borremose which is a Greek foot (33 cm), not Roman (29.5 cm).12 The inscription on the Meldorf fibula has been dated on stylistic grounds to the first half of the first century A.D. Although the interpretations proffered for this inscription are mostly problematic, most runologists see Meldorf as at least proto-runic, even while maintaining different theories as to the origin of the runes. The Meldorf inscription cannot be semantically Latin, and Germanic inscriptions in Roman letters are unparallelled for this period, the only roughly contemporary inscriptions being the orthographically North Italic Negau B helmet inscription, and the doubtful evidence supplied by an orthographically Latin coin legend from Pannonia. (The earliest Germano-Latin inscriptions attributed to the Rhenish Ubii date from the second–third centuries A.D.). Although it has not provided any orthographic clues as to the prototype for the fuþark, the discovery of the inscription on the Meldorf fibula has probably pushed back the date of the earliest use of the runes by the Germanic peoples to before the time of Tacitus. Indeed another first century find has recently come to light in excavations from Osterro¨nfeld, less than 50 km northeast from Meldorf, that bears an even briefer inscription that may also be runic.13 Many runologists suppose that the fuþark was borrowed or created as an indigenous response to the need for a system of writing for use in mercantile contracts such as those employed by Mediterranean traders. The underlying assumption here is that the Germanic peoples traded according to the rules of the Mediterranean cultures, a notion not borne out by modern archaeological constructions. Trade during the Germanic pre-Roman Iron Age was more inclined to diffusive tendencies or was dominated by ‘big men’ or chiefs in the modern reconstructions based on anthropological models. The evolutionary models of this archaeology indicate a type of economic structure quite different from the market economies of central Europe and the Mediterranean, although since the time of Caesar these economic systems had increasingly come into contact. The concept of a Germanic mercantile class is not borne out by historical or archaeological evidence.14 The notion of a mercantile need for the fuþark is obviously influenced by the written testaments of many other languages, such as Linear B Greek, that are records of traded commodities. The mercantile use of the fuþark, however, is not evidenced by any ancient (pre-Vo¨lkerwanderung) inscriptional find.15 Others suggest that Germanic warriors may have brought the Latin letters back with them after serving in the Roman army. This thesis is predicated on archaeological groundwork that indicates there is a concentration of Roman artefacts on Jutland and Sjælland, finds that are not parallelled closer to the borders of the Empire. As the earliest runic inscriptions also stem from this area, the same dynamic that produced the pattern in the distribution of imported artefacts is assumed to have affected the distribution of the early use of runes. Yet this pattern is only apparent from the fourth century A.D. when the archaeological record indicates centralising forces that are assumed to reflect the development of a centralised power on Sjælland, i.e. the early Danish state. Thus the runes are thought to have been adapted from Latin by warriors returning from Roman service for diplomatic, social or legal purposes in this early Danish state. The earliest runic finds, however, clearly pre-date the period for this reconstruction by at least two centuries. Although Roman goods first appear in this region from the late second century, at this earlier time it is clear from historical sources that Germanic mercenaries mainly came

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from the regions closest to the Empire, not Scandinavia. Indeed figures such as Arminius would clearly have been literate, and Germanic soldiers had probably served in the retinues of Celtic leaders in the last century B.C. or even somewhat earlier. This thesis clearly does not explain the distribution of the earliest runic finds. Moreover, although many runic inscriptions are found on weapons and shields of Germanic manufacture, there are none found on Roman imports. Thus imports of Roman manufacture are not directly linked with runic inscriptions, though both may be linked with a growing emphasis on the possession of prestige goods. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that indicates that a Germanic warrior brought the prototype upon which the runes were based back with him after a sojourn in the South.16 A cultic origin of the runic script is less well received. Many of the earliest runic finds are often characterised as pertaining to magico-religious discourses, and not surprisingly, the names of some Germanic deities have been recognised in early Germanic forms.17 The most aggressive example of this approach is one that seeks to characterise the evolution of the runic script as not from a Mediterranean prototype but rather as an autochthonous response utilising symbols that had appeared in Germanic (and indeed European) art since the Bronze Age. Of course the idea of orthographic transmission must have been borrowed from the cultures of the Mediterranean or Near East, but the form that this orthography took is, in this approach, held to be a Germanic innovation.18 The creation of the script at one time and at one place seems to be indicated by the standard form of the older fuþark, with independent traditions appearing only after the Vo¨lkerwanderungszeit. It is also extraordinary that the language of the older inscriptions, somewhat ahistorically termed Primitive Norse,19 is considered by some linguists as a koine´, implying that these inscriptions do not represent the dialects of Germanic of the time, but rather a standard runic language.20 The autochthonous theory is undermined by the similarities between runic and the Mediterranean scripts in the form of many of the characters, the number of characters in the rune-row, the regular alphabetic rather than syllabic or semisyllabic values, the representation of vowels and the continued use of pre-runic ideographs (such as the swastika) that are sometimes found embedded in runic inscriptions. Hence the search for a Mediterranean prototype of the Germanic script. There were a number of scripts in use in Italy other than Greek, Etruscan and Latin in the last centuries B.C. such as the four North Italic Alpine scripts of Lugano, Sondrio, Bolzano and Magre` and the related Venetic script of Este. The first of these, as was first clearly shown in 1970, was used by Celtic peoples of the Golasecca culture and later La Te`ne Cisalpine Gallic invaders (who also adopted other Italic scripts such as Venetic and Subpicenian). Further east, in Carinthia, another script was used by the Celtic Norici in a region proximate to the northernmost Venetic finds. A modified Iberian script of the Celtiberian peoples was employed in northern Spain and southern Gaul, and Celtic peoples also used an Ionian Greek script borrowed from the Phocaean colonists at Massalia, only adopting Latin letters after the creation of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis.21 The discovery of the Meldorf fibula, even if we accept that it bears only early or protorunes, pushes back the time for the adoption of writing by the ancient Germans to at least about the time of Christ.22 Yet it is unlikely that this inscription represents the first native Germanic attempt at orthographic representation. Such finds suggest, then, that the earliest use of the runes pre-dates the Roman expansion to the Rhine and Danube. If this is the case, then the most likely model for the runic script would be one of the scripts employed by Celtic peoples in the last centuries B.C. noting the large amount of Celtic material imports of this time which have been seen as indicative of the method of transmission of much technology to the North.23 Indeed certain letters of the Celtiberian script show remarkable similarities in form to runic, as do those of the Lugano, Noric, Venetic, Latin and Greek scripts used by these peoples. Nevertheless, orthographically the runic script is held in the handbooks to be most similar to the North Italic alphabets. The comparisons, however, rely on not one particular

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North Italic script, but rather an amalgam of the five mentioned above. This orthographic preference is indicated in at least eleven of the North Italic characters, significantly more than that of Latin or Greek.24 Yet the number of North Italic correspondences is reduced significantly if each of the scripts is considered separately, which makes the comparison charts, most of which are copied from Marstrander’s original contribution, rather misleading. Solutions to this problem deriving solely from one-to-one comparisons of the runes with Mediterranean scripts have in the main been unconvincing. A more successful approach may be to study other criteria for the origin of the runic script. We know one of the methods of divination employed by the Germanic peoples of the first century thanks to a description by Tacitus. This divinatory practice that talks of written symbols is described in the following passage in his Germania of A.D. 98:25 auspicia sortesque ut qui maxime observant. sortium consuetudo simplex. virgam frugiferae arbori decisam in surculos amputant eosque notis quibusdam discretos super candidam vestam temere ac fortuito spargunt. mox, si publice consultatur, sacerdos civitatis, sin privatim, ipse pater familae, precatus deos caelumque suspiciens, ter singulos tollit, sublatos secundum impressam ante notam interpretatur.

Previously, under the influence of the autochthonous theory, these notae had been equated with Germanic ideographs such as the swastika, triskelion, fulmen and tamgas. Yet from the Classical Latin use of nota ‘indication, symbol, letter, cipher’, it seems that Tacitus, as is his usual practice, has probably translated a Germanic expression. As we now know, due to the discovery of the Meldorf fibula, that the Germanic peoples employed writing before the time of Tacitus, this term can scarcely be any other than ‘rune’. What is probably our earliest historical reference to Germanic writing is, therefore, connected with a cultic discourse, an observation that agrees with interpretations of many of the early inscriptions which stress their invocatory nature.26 Many of the early inscriptions state that they were written by an erilaz, a word that evades a convincing etymology.27 One type of runic inscription that appears from an early date is the setting out of the fuþark, often independent of any other message, a type of inscription well known in other protoliterate societies such as that of the early Etruscans, Latins, Greeks and Gauls.28 Considering the connotation of mastery in the Germanic root *er-, the erilaz is best interpreted as a master of the runes and it is possible that the runerow inscriptions were intended to indicate that the writer was proficient in the use of the fuþark; that he or she had been initiated into its use.29 Sometimes in these inscriptions the order of pairs of runestaves is reversed.30 These alternations are best explained by a mechanical system underlying the order of the fuþark: i.e. it was a group of paired characters. Obviously, then, the rune masters learned the runestaves in pairs, and sometimes the order of some pairs was confused. We also know the magical implication of many of these early runic inscriptions owing to the appearance of words such as alu (cf. Hitt. alwanza- ‘bewitched, ensorcelled’, Gk. alu´o¯ ‘be beside oneself’, Lett. aluoˆt ‘wander aimlessly’; OE ealu, OS alo-, ON o˛l, PG *aluþ - ‘intoxicating beverage’ > ‘ale’) that can only be described as invocatory.31 A notable example often promoted as representing a magical use of the runes is the inscription on the fish-shaped bone piece from Lindholm. Not only does it include the statement:32 ek erilaR sawilagaR ha(i)teka ‘I, the erilaR am known as SawilagaR’, but the reverse contains an inscription that seems completely meaningless: aaaaaaaa RRR nnn  b m u ttt : alu : Some authors have suggested that both inscriptions were construed as 24 characters long, as many as there are in the fuþark. A similar connection between the inscription and number of characters has been seen in other inscriptions. Many such arguments are surely far-fetched, yet the sequence of repeated runes on the Lindholm piece seems to indicate

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some sort of cryptological, or considering later magical practices, a magico-religious expression.33 It has also been observed by many linguists that the staves of the fuþark show inadequate concern for the Germanic phonological system. The best known indication of this is the appearance of the yew rune, which is usually represented by ¨ı in the grammars, the phone that it represented being a matter of some dispute, but it is generally held to be identical to that of the ice rune, i.e. an /i(:)/. The retention of what seems to be a phonetically redundant character in an adopted script is very odd, and many different theories have been proffered to explain this aberration.34 The name of each rune is also interesting for the question of the origin of the runes because neither the Latin nor Greek scripts had meaningful acrophonic names for each letter. It is also notable that some inscriptions suggest that the individual rune names were known well enough to be used as ideographs rather than actually spelling out the lexeme so represented. This suggests that the names may have been more than mere mnemonic devices.35 It is noteworthy that a seemingly unconnected, lexically meaningless inscription has come to light in Pompeii. This inscription is a series of Latin letters in pairs, the first letter of each pairing starting with A and heading forward in the ABC, the second with X and heading backward:36 AXBVCTDSER The Pompeii inscription has been linked by Elmar Seebold to a practice known in Near Eastern societies, divination by letters, especially in the form known to the Semites as athbash.37 This system relied on pairs of letters grouped from alternate halves of the script, as occurs in the Pompeii inscription. If the order of the Germanic rune-row is compared to that of the Mediterranean scripts a similar pattern can be discerned. The sound values of the fuþark when compared to the Mediterranean scripts indicate an ath-bash or a similar mechanical pairing system, which, if Seebold is correct, was known to the Mediterranean cultures in the centuries B.C.38 This is remarkable given the nature of the rune names recorded in medieval sources, from which scholars have, through the comparative method, produced a series of Common or Proto-Germanic names, one for each character of the older fuþark. The names seem to appear mostly in semantic pairs and the ideas represented by these rune names can nearly all be construed as pairs of complements or oppositions (e.g. the names of f and u are *fehu and *u¯ruz, ‘cow, livestock, wealth’ and ‘aurochs’, tamed and untamed; þ and a are *þurisaz and *ansuz, ‘giant’ and ‘god’, the cosmic opposites of the mythological world).39 Additionally, the rune pairs often seem to be semantically linked to other pairs. This observation has led some runologists to make the controversial suggestion that the rune names can be collected into three semantic groups of eight with the conceptual meanings ‘living thing’, ‘nature’, and ‘society’, groups that mirror the separation of the staves into three eights or families (ON ættir) in medieval sources.40 This proposed system seems no accident, and given the possible influence of an ath-bash or a similar mechanical divinatory system as indicated by the paired order of the rune row, and the presence of phonological inconsistencies such as the yew rune, the evidence points to an early utilisation of the runic script in an oracular system. Thus it may be possible to rediscover something of what Tacitus means when he speaks of divination by reading the cast notae.41 Yet is there a direct connection between Mediterranean and northern uses of divinatory writing? Seebold has not been able to demonstrate adequately a numerical system upon which the rune-row is based that corresponds to another oracular system which would provide a prototype for the underlying system of paired names and order of the fuþark, although he has indicated mechanical parallels.42. Seebold believes that there is a direct influence in the mantic use of writing among the semiliterate in the Mediterranean on the

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Germanic script. He has not, however, been any more successful in demonstrating how this connection was established than those who have previously sought to show an orthographic connection between north and south. Although runologists have systematically sought to purge their field of an equation of inexplicable with magical in recent years, Seebold’s argument cannot so easily be dismissed when we consider that systems of alphabet magic are clearly evidenced in the orthographic traditions of the Mediterranean world.43 We know of three types of Celtic divination that were observed by classical authors. The first recounted by Diodorus required a human victim. The second mentioned by the same author was ornithomancy, and a third was oracular incubation, mentioned by Nicander of Colophon, where the Celts slept beside the ashes of the dead.44 It is interesting that the Gauls did not practice divination by letters, since we know that they had a religious implication for the Druids, and that this practice was widespread in the literate cultures. Caesar remarks upon the Druidic distrust of writing, which he suggests is due to their wish to maintain their oral culture. Despite this, he indicates the large-scale use of writing among the Gauls for other purposes, and Druidic lore was committed to writing as is witnessed by the Gaulish calenders, which makes his claim problematic.45 The prohibition against writing in Gaulish society probably stems from some magico-religious taboo. We know that there were other magico-religious figures in Gaulish society outside the body classed as Druids. In addition, there are figures who can only be called sorcerers, and who committed their beliefs to writing as is witnessed by the black magic text from the end of the first century A.D. found at Hospitalet-du-Larzac in 1983. One of the women named thereon is even designated lidssatim liciatim ‘a user of letters, a caster of lots’46 It is possible that the proscription on writing noted by Caesar was linked to the divination by letters by non-Druids in Celtic society. An argument from silence is particularly hazardous in such an early period but there have been previous attempts to link runic with Celtic epigraphy. The g rune, for example, has been seen as a loan from Gallo-Latin orthography where Gaulish [x] was represented by X, a retention from Gallo-Greek, and this rune has always been seen as good evidence for the source of the adoption of the runes, as most scripts do not employ a similar character for /g/. More controversially, Marstrander links the d rune with the formally identical character that usually represented the Old Celtic dental affricative in the Lugano and Cisalpine Gallo-Latin inscriptions. We might also note that the Irish orthography, Ogham, is the only European writing system roughly contemporary to the early use of runes that also reserved a separate sign for [n].47 The rune name *perþaz has also been connected etymologically with Celtic (OE peorð, Goth. pertra, OIr. qe(i)rt, Welsh perth, ‘bush’ < Celtic *kwert). The name probably indicates a cultic discourse related to wood, and has been linked to the Gaulish goddess Perta, as well as Ogham, the oldest letter names of which include a q-Celtic qe(i)rt and were mostly taken from the names of trees. Two of the other rune names are also those of trees: *berkanan `birch (twigs)', and *ı¯waz `yew'. Although not good evidence for a connection specifically to Ogham, this does indicate a mystical association of wood and letters.48 More tellingly, however, as Proto-Germanic inherited no initial */p/ from Indo-European (which has very few clear examples of initial */b/), we should not expect an acrophonic Germanic rune name for p, but rather one containing the common medial Germanic /p/. Indeed, the Celtic p/q allophony appears to be reflected in the Old English and Gothic names for characters denoting the voiceless labiovelar, cweorð and quertra.49 There is also a semantic connection between wood and omens in Insular Celtic that has been linked with the process recounted by Tacitus. In Irish the consulting of oracles is indicated by crann chur, ‘casting wood’. In Cornish there is a similar expression teulel pren, again ‘casting wood’, and which is linked with Breton prendenn‘destiny’. Similarly, Welsh coelbren ‘consult wood’, which is connected to blaen brenn ‘good luck’, later

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comes to mean ‘alphabet’ in the expression coelbren y beirdd. Indeed the use of Ogham signs carved on wooden rods in a divination in the Leabhar na nUidhri recension of Tochmarc E´taine, added to the arboreal allusions obvious in the terminology used to describe the Ogham signs (feda ‘wood’ and flesc ‘twig’) which are clearly reminiscent of terms used in runic discourse (corresponding to staff and branch), completes a semantic triad of wood, omens and letters in Insular Celtic sources, one reminiscent of the ceremony recounted by Tacitus.50 Perhaps the most important piece of evidence, however, is the etymology of the word used to describe the inscriptions themselves. As the linguistic correspondences between Celtic and Germanic are so few and so late, it has long been recognised that the common vocabulary, most of which probably represents loanwords, or at least conterminous development, can tell us much about the early contacts between the Celtic and Germanic worlds.51 The Germanic word ‘rune’ is clearly one such term. Gothic runa, OE run, ON ru´n have the meaning ‘secret, mystery’, cognate in no other IE dialect save the similarly meaning OIr. ru´n and Welsh rhin, though the respective phonologies of these terms prevents the analysis that would clearly indicate to which language the term is native and to which it is loaned.52 Yet there are also a number of related Celto-Germanic isoglosses of a similar semantic sphere, which together with ‘rune’ may form a body of divinatory terminology. Prominent among such terms are common words for ‘poet, seer’ (Gaul. vates, OIr. fa´ith, OE woþbora ), ‘confess, speak’ (Welsh iaith, Bret. iez, OHG jiht, OS gehan), ‘tell, speak’ (OIr. ra´dim, MWelsh adraud, Goth. rodjan, ON ræDa), and even the name of the famous Germanic seeress Veleda (MIr. fili, pl. filid).53 If the transmission of writing to the North occurred during the late pre-Roman Iron Age, it is probable that this happened at a time before Caesar and tribes such as the Marcomanni brought the Roman and Germanic worlds face-to-face on the Rhine-Danube frontier. Although the possibility of mercantile contacts via the northern sea routes remains possible, it is likely that the Germanic peoples first learned the use of writing through the agency of their Celtic neighbours who separated them from the Mediterranean cultures as is evidenced in a number of striking correspondences between the Celtic and Germanic orthographical traditions. The runic inscribers themselves believed that the runes were taught to them by the gods, a story remembered by the Eddic Ha´vama´l, as did the Irish of their script named after the deity Oghma.54 Rather than relying on preconceived theories of the origin of writing in preliterate societies, we have considered the evidence of the oldest runic finds. As continued archaeological field work pushes the date of the adoption of the runes further back, the possibility of a borrowing from a Celtic use of Greek, Latin or the more orthographically similar Etruscan-based Lugano or Noric scripts seems ever more likely. The orthographic evidence for the origin of the fuþark has never been able to indicate an absolute preference for any of the three Mediterranean alphabets, probably because of a genetic relationship between Greek, Etruscan and Latin.55 The similarities between North Italic, Greek and Latin scripts, therefore, may preclude a definitive answer on orthographic grounds. Etymological grounds do point to a confluence of thought between Celtic and Germanic ideas with regard to the mystical association of letters. The isogloss represented by the Germanic expression ‘rune’ may point to, if not a Celtic provenance of the fuþark, then at least a strong influence in its creation.56 Of the scripts used by Celtic peoples, the Lugano script is attested the earliest (6th century B.C.) and the Greek letters were borrowed by the Transalpine Gauls sometime after the foundation of Massalia in the sixth century. The Celtiberian orthography was derived from the Punic-based Iberian script in the third century, and the use of Latin begins late in the second century B.C. in Gaul, gradually spreading north with Roman conquest.57 More importantly, the Helvetii, a Celtic tribe who neighboured the Germanic world of the last centuries B.C. were known to employ Greek letters up to the time of the Gallic War, which may be correlated by a brief inscription on a vase from Manching and a stamped Gallo-Greek legend on a sword from Port, Canton de

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Berne, both finds of the late La Te`ne period.58 Any earlier inscriptional finds will definitely preclude an origin directly from Roman sources, and the balance of probability given the timeframes for the other scripts speaks against the Latin thesis as most recently argued by Bengt Odenstedt and Henrik Williams.59 Many of the runic characters may well have been taken from the Lugano script, which underwent mutation between its earliest (Lepontic) use and the later Cisalpine Gallic period, and Lugano inscriptions are found from the banks of the Rhoˆne to as far east as Celtic Noricum where another Etruscan-based script was also employed.60 Additionally, the Lugano script shows some features of the Celtiberian script, another orthographically similar script, with many rune-like characters.61 The northern provenance of the earliest finds probably merely indicates an adoption before the last century invasions of the Marcomanni et al. The scripts used by the Celtic tribes of central Europe are not well known to us, though the Helvetii are reported to have used Greek letters, and the Boii of Northern Italy used the Lugano script which may have been employed by other Boii at Manching or in Bohemia.62 Tacitus also tells us that there existed in his time memorial inscriptions in Greek letters on the border of Germany and Raetia that are usually taken for North Italic letters (as the designation Greek was also used by Roman writers to apply to Etruscan inscriptions) and North Italic inscriptions have been found at Manching (though they have been explained away by some archaeologists as imports).63 The early influence of these central European Celtic tribes in Germanic society is indicated by the use of the name of the Celtic Volcae Tectosages in Germanic as a designation for all southerners, whether Celtic or Romanic.64 Furthermore, the probable creation of the runes at one place and one time, the consistent use of the older fuþark in a more or less standard form for centuries (including the rune names), the suggestion of a runic koine´ and the spread of runic use to all of the Germanic tribes may indicate a learned class of pan-Germanic rune masters. This class is likely to have adopted the fuþark for magico-religious purposes. Whether a magico-religious usage was the primary employment of the runes is not clear, but what is probably the earliest historical description of runes indicates their use in such a context. Although many of the features associated with the Germanic script may well be secondary developments, the influence of a foreign magico-religious tradition as indicated by the mechanical principle that underlies the order of the rune-row implies an adoption from an orthographic culture with a similar magicoreligious tradition. The connection between Celtic superstition, Celtic orthography and the well known dependence of the North on the Celtic transmission of technology in the last centuries B.C. all point to a Celtic transmission of the runes. Abbreviations AcS A. Holder, Alt-celtische Sprachschatz, 3 vols, Leipzig 1896–1907. CIL Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum, 17 vols, Berlin 1861 ff. IEW J. Pokorny, Indogermanisches etymologisches Wo¨rterbuch, 2 vols, Bern 1959–69. University of Melbourne Australia

NOTES 1 This is the position taken by the best known handbooks: R. W. V. Elliot, Runes, An Introduction, Manchester 1959, pp. 3–13; L. Musset (F. Mosse´), Introduction a` la runologie, Paris 1965, pp. 42–55; W. Krause, Runen, Berlin 1970, pp. 35–45; K. Du¨wel, Runenkunde, 2nd ed., Stuttgart 1983, pp. 90–95; R. I. Page, Runes, London 1987, p. 4, or in works with a more general scope of survey such as C.-J. Hutterer, Die germanischen Sprachen, 3rd ed., Budapest 1990, pp. 105–107 and D. Diringer, The Alphabet, A Key to the History of Mankind, 2 vols, 3rd ed., London 1968, I, pp. 402 f. Some recent authors such as Erik Moltke, Bengt Odenstedt and Henrik Williams favour the Latin thesis; others such as Elmer Antonsen remain more cautious: E. H.

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Antonsen, ‘Zum Ursprung und Alter des germanischen Fuþarks’, in E. Dick and K. Jankowsky (eds), Festschrift fu¨r Karl Schneider, Amsterdam 1982, pp. 3–15; E. Moltke, Runes and their Origin, Denmark and Elsewhere, 2nd ed., trans. P. G. Foote, Copenhagen 1985, pp. 38–73; B. Odenstedt, On the Origin and Early History of the Runic Script, Uppsala 1990, pp. 145–173; H. Williams, ‘The Origin of the Runes’, Amsterdamer Beitra¨ge zur a¨lteren Germanistik 45, 1996, pp. 211–218. L. F. A. Wimmer, ‘Runeskriftens Oprindelse og Udvikling i Norden’, Aarbøger for nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie, 1874, pp. 1–270; idem, Die Runenschrift, trans. F. Holthausen, Berlin 1887. Earlier contributions are discussed in H. Arntz, Handbuch der Runenkunde, Halle an der Saale 1935, pp. 6–12. S. Bugge, ‘Om Runeskriftens Begyndelser’, Beretning om Forhandlingerne paa det 5te nordiske Filologmøde, Kjøbenhavn 1899, p. 57; O. von Friesen, ‘Om runeskriftens ha¨rkomst’, Spra˚kvetenskapliga Sa¨llskapet i Uppsala, Fo¨rhandlingar, 1904–6. C. J. S. Marstrander, ‘Om runene og runenavnenes oprindelse’, Norsk tidsskrift for sprogvidenskap 1, 1928, pp. 85–188; M. Hammarstro¨m, ‘Om runeskriftens ha¨rkomst’, Studier i nordisk filologi 20, 1930, pp. 1–67. S. Opitz, ‘South Germanic Runic Inscriptions in the Older Futhark: Some Notes on Research’, in B. Brogyanyi and T. Kro¨mmelbein (eds), Germanic Dialects Linguistic and Philological Investigations, Amsterdam 1986, p. 467. Of course both Pedersen and Marstrander were also Celticists. The Negau B inscription dates to a similar or slightly earlier period to the Meldorf fibula, but is written in (sinistroverse) Venetic script. Notably, Marstrander was the first to interpret this inscription as Germanic, which is probably an indication of the influence of the inscription in the development of his thesis. The Maria Saalerberg fake had a similar influence as can clearly be seen in Georg Baesecke’s article that first connected Cimbri to the runes, as well as inspiring Heinrich Hempel’s thesis that was further developed by Helmut Arntz. The Alpengermanen were based on the Tylangii and Daliterni of Avienus, Ora Maritima 674 f., the ‘semigermane gentes’ of Livy 21, 38, 8, the Acta Triumphalia inscription de Galleis Insubribus et Germ[an(eis)] commemorating the triumph of M. Claudius Marcellus (CIL 1, a.u.c. 532), and the Gaesatae of Polybios 2, 34, and have even been suggested to be Celtic Germani. H. Pedersen, ‘Runernes oprindelse’, Aarbøger for nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie 13, 1923, pp. 37–82; C. J. S. Marstrander, ‘Les Inscriptions des casques de Negau’, Symbolae Osloenses 3, 1925, pp. 37–64; G. Baesecke, ‘Die Herkunft der Runen’, Germanisch–Romanishe Monatsschrift 22, 1934, pp. 413–417; H. Hempel, ‘Der Ursprung der Runenschrift’, Germanisch–Romanische Monatsschrift 23, 1935, pp. 401–426; H. Arntz, Handbuch der Runenkunde, 2nd ed., Halle an der Saale 1944, pp. 61–64; H. Schmeja, Der Mythos der Alpengermanen, Wien 1968. For a summary of the debate since Wimmer see A. Kabell, ‘Periculum runicum’, Norsk tidsskrift for sprogvidenskap 21, 1967, pp. 94–126 and Du¨wel, pp. 90–95. F. Altheim and E. Trautmann, Vom Ursprung der Runen, Frankfurt am Main 1939, pp. 47 ff. A similar theory has more recently been proposed by Otto Ho¨fler based on a dubious interpretation of one of the Negau A helmet inscriptions and the equation, following Bugge and von Friesen, of the tribal Heruli with the unclear runic term erilaz; O. Ho¨fler, ‘Herkunft und Ausbreitung der Runen’, Die Sprache 17, 1971, pp. 134–156. Modern Himmerland in medieval sources appears as Himbersysæl, and Thy as Tythesysæl, which is clearly related to ON þjo ð ‘people’; H. Krahe, Sprache und Vorzeit, Heidelberg 1954, p. 133. Ptolemy (Geographica 2, 10), however, seems to place the Cimbri of his time further north, perhaps in Vendsyssel and the Teutones further south. It is possible that some Cimbri and Teutones returned north to be indicated by Ptolemy, but of this we have no evidence, as the ancestors of the surviving peoples of the time of Ptolemy may never have joined the original exodus, which was not significant enough to be seen in the archaeological record. O. Klindt–Jensen, ‘Foreign Influences in Denmark’s Early Iron Age’, trans. W. E. Calvert, Acta Archaeologica 20, 1949, p. 196, links the Cimbrian exodus to the opening up of trading links with the Celtic South. J. Jensen, The Prehistory of Denmark, London 1982, p. 167. The first record of the name of a Germanic tribe is by Pytheas of Massalia in Pliny, N.H. 37, 35. The German ethnography of Poseidonios (fl. c. 90 B.C.) was used by Caesar, B.G. 6, 21–28. H. J. Eggers, ‘Zur absoluten Chronologie der ro¨mischen Kaiserzeit in freien Germanien’, Jahrbuch des Ro¨misch–Germanischen Zentralmuseum Mainz 2, 1955, pp. 196–244 (now reprinted in H. Temporini and W. Haase (eds), Aufstieg und Niedergang der ro¨mischen Welt, Berlin 1972 ff., II, 5/1, pp. 3–64); G. Ekholm, ‘Kragehulplattan. Ett obeaktat rundokument’, Arkiv fo¨r nordisk filologi 57, 1959, pp. 112–114. A. G. Brodeur, ‘The Riddle of the Runes’, University of California Publications in English 3/1, 1932, pp. 14– 15; H. Birkhan, Germanen und Kelten bis zum Ausgang der Ro¨merzeit, Wien 1970, pp. 167 ff.; R. L. Morris, Runic and Mediterranean Epigraphy, Odense 1988; F. Kaul, ‘The Gundestrup Cauldron Reconsidered’, trans. D. Robinson, Acta Archaeologica 66, 1995, pp. 1–38; F. Kaul and J. Martens, ‘Southeast European Influences in the Early Iron Age of Southern Scandinavia: Gundestrup and the Cimbri’, trans. P. Crabb, Acta Archaeologica 66, 1995, pp. 111–161. CIL 13, 7776–8860 & 11981–12086; H. Birkhan, ‘Die keltischen“ Personnennamen des boiischen ” M. Gebu¨hr, ‘Die Fibel von Meldorf und die Großsilbers’, Die Sprache 17, 1971, pp. 28–30; K. Du¨wel and Anfa¨nge der Runenschrift’, Zeitschrift fu¨r deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 110, 1981, p. 170; R. Nedoma, Die Inschrift auf dem Helm B von Negau, Wien 1995; M. Dietz, E. Marold and H. Jo¨ns, ‘Eine fru¨hkaiserzeitliche Scherbe mit Schriftzeichen aus Osterro¨nfeld, Kr. Rendsburg-Eckenfo¨rde’, Archa¨ologisches Korrespondenzblatt 26, 1996, pp. 179–189; B. Mees, ‘A New Interpretation of the Meldorf Fibula Inscription’, Zeitschrift fu¨r deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 126, 1997, pp. 131–139.

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14 For a recent summary of these ideas see J. Collis, The European Iron Age, London 1984, pp. 15–20. On mercantile contacts see H. J. Eggers, Der ro¨mische Import im freien Germanien, Hamburg 1951, p. 42. 15 Odenstedt, Origin, pp. 171 f. 16 R. Much, Die Germania des Tacitus erla¨utert, Heidelberg 1934, p. 158; M. Waas, Germanen im ro¨mischen Dienst, 2nd ed., Bonn 1971, pp. 1–3; L. Hedeager, Iron Age Societies, From Tribe to State in Northern Europe 500 BC – AD 700, trans. J. Hines, Oxford 1992, passim; G. Rausing, ‘The Origin of the Runes’, Fornva¨nnen 87, 1992, pp. 200–205; A. Quak, ‘Nochmal Einmal die Latein-These’, Amsterdamer Beitra¨ge zur a¨lteren Germanistik 45, 1996, pp. 171–179; H. Williams, ‘The Romans and the Runes—The Uses of Writing In Germania’, in S. Nystro¨m (ed.), Runor och ABC, Stockholm 1997, pp. 177–192. 17 The Thorsberg chape inscription probably includes a reference to Ullr, and Donar and Wodan are clearly mentioned on the Nordendorf fibula. 18 R. M. Meyer, ‘Runenstudien. I. Die urgermanischen runen’, Beitra¨ge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 21, 1896, pp. 162–84. Of course the autochthonous theory was subsequently linked to the concept of an Indo-European Urschrift. Such a linkage, however, received little support until Gustav Neckel developed the notion of an Urverwandtschaft of the runes with the Mediterranean scripts in his review of the North Etruscan thesis in Deutsche Literaturzeitung 50, 1929, pp. 1237–1239. 19 For a critique of this term see E. H. Antonsen, ‘Linguistics and Politics in the 19th Century’, Michigan Germanic Studies 6, 1980, pp. 1–16. 20 H. F. Nielsen, The Germanic Languages, Origins and Early Dialectal Interrelations, 2nd ed., Tuscaloosa 1989, p. 5; E. A. Makaev, The Language of the Oldest Runic Inscriptions, trans. J. Meredig, Stockholm 1996, pp. 23–48; See, however, Antonsen, ‘Die a¨ltesten Runeninschriften’, pp. 340–343. 21 There has in the past been a confusion of Greek and Lugano orthography which has seen many apparently Greek inscriptions reclassified as Lugano in recent years. The early (Lepontic) Lugano script included a form of theta whose presence in an inscription has been used sometimes incorrectly as indicative of Greek. Lugano inscriptions have been found as far west as Gallia Narbonensis and to the east in Noricum; M. Lejeune, ‘Documents gaulois et para–gaulois de Cisalpine’, Etudes celtiques 12, 1970–71, pp. 337–500 = Lepontica, Paris 1971; A. L. Prosdocimi and P. Solinas, ‘The Language and Writing of the Early Celts’, in S. Moscati et al. (eds), The Celts, London 1991, p. 56. 22 Du¨wel, p. 144. Antonsen has also consistently maintained that there is evidence for spellings that seem to indicate retentions from an orthographic tradition that represented earlier forms of Germanic; E. H. Antonsen, ‘Runes and Romans on the Rhine’, Amsterdamer Beitra¨ge zur a¨lteren Germanistik 45, 1996, pp. 10 f. 23 Even the prototype upon which the Meldorf fibula was based is Celtic. The present author holds that the cultural dependency of the Germanic world on their Celtic neighbours, however, is not as marked as some archaeologists such as Ole Klindt-Jensen and historical linguists such as Henry d’Arbois de Jubainville and his successors Sigmund Feist and Myles Dillon have supposed. H. d’Arbois de Jubainville, Celtes et Germains, Paris 1886; S. Feist, Indogermanen und Germanen, 3rd ed., Halle an der Saale 1924, pp. 74–77; M. Dillon, ‘Germanic and Celtic’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 17, 1943, pp. 492–98; Klindt-Jensen, passim. 24 Most published tallies of the number of one-to-one correspondences between each script and runic are teleological or even self-contradictory. Moltke (p. 55), for example, seems to ignore the evidence of the tables he has assembled (p. 50). From his total of ten North Etruscan correspondences (only nine of which are described in his comparative table), at least one is missing (i.e. b). Similarly, it is surely perverse to maintain a preference in comparison for Latin letters such as L or S when there are North Etruscan characters that are identical to l and the three early variants of s. 25 Tac., Germ. 10. Cf. Plutarch, Marius 15, 4; Caesar, B.G. 1, 50; Much, p. 131; A. Mentz, ‘Die notae der Germanen bei Tacitus’, Rheinisches Museum fu¨r Philologie 86, 1937, pp. 193–205; and S. F. Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome, London 1997, p. 168. 26 Arnzt, pp. 223–248. Nota clearly has the implication of identification, and does not mean merely ‘notch, mark’; P. G. W. Glare (ed.), Oxford Latin Dictionary, Oxford 1982, pp. 1191 f. Here of course lies the inherent weakness of the argument of R. L. Morris, ‘Northwest Germanic ru¯na >rune<. A case of homonymy with Go. ru¯na >mystery<’, Beitra¨ge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 107, 1985, pp. 344–358. He asserts that the connection of mysterion to a concept which implies communication is incongruent. If the script was in the earliest times a magico–religious expression, as Tacitus seems to indicate, then this connection is completely reconcilable, and obviates the need for a circuitous etymology that relies on a discrete homonymy. 27 It has often been connected either with ON jarl, or the ethnicon Heruli; Makaev, pp. 34–41. A satisfactory explanation is yet to appear, though it appears to derive from a Germanic stem indicating mastery (cf. OHG irmin ‘great’, OE eorl, OS erl ‘lord’); IEW 326, 328. 28 There are nine of these inscriptions: from Kylver, Lindkær, Vadstena, Grumpan, Aquincum, Breza, Charnay, Beuchte and Gudme. Those of Aquincum, Beuchte and Gudme, however, do not progress beyond the first ætt. The earliest, the Kylver fuþark, can only roughly be dated from c. A.D. 1–400. 29 Despite the masculine grammatical gender of the term, there is no doubt that some of the inscriptions can be shown to be socially gendered. At least two inscriptions were incontrovertibly written by women and it has long been recognised that the Germanic priesthood was substantially if not exclusively female in origin. In addition, in ON sources seiðr is designated as belonging to the sphere of women, an assignation perhaps

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35 36 37

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observed in Tac., Germ. 8. Opitz, p. 466; P. Scardigli, ‘Das Problem der suebischen Kontinuita¨t und die Runeninschrift von Neudingen/Baar’, in H. Beck (ed.), Germanenprobleme in heutiger Sicht, Berlin 1986, pp. 350 f.; E. C. Polome´, ‘Germanic Religion: An Overview’, in idem, Essays in Germanic Religion, Washington D.C. 1989, p. 83. In the Kylver stone inscription the ninth pair p and ¨ı are reversed. The rune–row inscriptions also show an ambivalence as to the order of the last pair, d and o, one even evident in the manuscript tradition. Even more significantly, in the Lindkær/Over Hornbæk inscription the positions of two pairs, t, b and R, s, are reversed. E. C. Polome´, ‘Beer, Runes and Magic’, Journal of Indo–European Studies 24, 1996, pp. 99–105; cf. IEW 33 f. For a summary of discussions of magical discourses, most of which are rejected by present–day runologists, see K. M. Nielsen, ‘Runen und Magie’, Fru¨hmittelalterliche Studien 19, 1985, pp. 75–97. W. Krause with H. Jankuhn, Die Runeninschriften im a¨lteren Futhark, 2 vols, Go¨ttingen 1966, no. 29, pp. 69– 72. The fifteenth character in the second inscription is illegible. For an explanation of what appears to be the deliberate omission of a rune here in haiteka and in other inscriptions see W. P. Lehmann, ‘Vant er stafs vı´fi— am. 12.9: “the woman omitted a stave”’, in E. Dick and K. Jankowsky (eds), Festschrift fu¨r Karl Schneider, Amsterdam 1982, pp. 43–48. The magical connection in this inscription has long been promoted owing to the survival of a runic tradition in the alliterative Icelandic kvennagaldur love charm Risti eg þe r asa atta, nauðir nıu, þussa þretta n and the almost identical practice in the Galdrabok spell (no. 46): Skriff desser staffer a kalffskind huit med blod þinum … og mæl, Rist æg þ (ier) Otte ausse Naudir Nije þossa ðrettan. This and the emphasis on naming evident in the almost formulaic statements of some of the inscriptions are considered at some length in S. E. Flowers, Runes and Magic Magical Formulaic Elements in the Older Runic Tradition, New York 1986. The character was once seen as representing an ill–defined front vowel of the region from [e(:)] to [i(:)]. Some linguists hold that the yew rune, the use of which died out relatively quickly, represented a PG /i:/ < IE */ei/ whereas the ice rune represented PG /i:/ < IE */i:/ and suggest that this differentiation stems from either a very early time when this difference could still be noted or that the value of the yew rune was influenced by an eastern Celtic dialect where there was a late monophthongisation of */ei/. Antonsen somewhat controversially holds that the yew rune stands for his Proto–Germanic vowel /æ:/, though his arguments make no attempt to reconcile the value of the vowel indicated by the acrophonic names. Krause, who maintains that it was the ice rune that originally signified /ei/, attests the value /i(:)/ for the yew rune in at least two early inscriptions. It should also be noted that /ei/ is not monophthongised in the first century Negau B inscription HARIXASTITEIVA///IP, the Finnish loan teivas, or in the name (in the dative) of the second century Germanic goddess ALATEIVIAE (CIL 13, 8606). Leo Connolly has been unable to prove a reading /i¯(:)/ from the evidence of the inscriptions in his laryngealist interpretation. Nor have recent attempts to prove that the thirteenth rune originally represented [c¸] (as it comes to do in some late English inscriptions) been convincing as this value is merely an allophone of the phoneme represented by h. M. I. Steblin–Kamenskij, ‘Noen fonologiske betrakninger over de eldre runer’, Arkiv fo¨r nordisk filologi 77, 1962, pp. 1–6; Birkhan, pp. 175– 180; E. H. Antonsen, A Concise Grammar of the Oldest Runic Inscriptions, Tu¨bingen 1970, pp. 2–6; idem, ‘Ursprung und Alter’, pp. 10–12; Krause, pp. 27, 35; L. A. Connolly, ‘The Rune and the Germanic Vowel System’, Amsterdamer Beitra¨ge zur a¨lteren Germanistik 14, 1979, pp. 1–32; O. Grønvik, Runene pa˚ Tunesteinen, Olso 1989, pp. 29–32; Makaev, pp. 57–59. Other characters that have been seen as redundant phonologically are n (which does not represent a phoneme) and R (although this staff is now usually equated with PG */z/). E. H. Antonsen, ‘On the Typology of the Older Runic Inscriptions’, Scandinavian Studies 52, 1980, pp. 4 f. CIL 4, 2541. The ordering in this inscription obviously predates the introduction of Greek Y and Z to the Latin alphabet in the late Republican period. E. Seebold, ‘Was haben die Germanen mit den Runen gemacht? Und wieviel haben sie davon von ihren antiken Vorbilden gelernt?’, in B. Brogyanyi and T. Kro¨mmelbein (eds), Germanic Dialects Linguistic and Philological Investigations, Amsterdam 1986, pp. 543–548. The Semitic letters also had acrophonic names. The usual order is: fuþarkgw:hnijı¨pRs:tbemlndo. The staves a, b, d, e, f, g, h, ¨ı, k, l are paired with þ, t, o, m, u, w, n, p, r, n (or in alphabetic order: m, n, o, p, r, t, u, w, þ, n). The pairs that do not fit this scheme are i, j and R, s which may be due to the influence of the rare and somewhat troublesome staves ¨ı and R. A dependence on the Mediterranean ordering is clearly described in these pairs, especially in those for which the one-to-one correspondences with alphabetic characters are fairly clear such as f, u; r, k; h, n; t, b; and e, m. Thus is answered Moltke’s complaint that ‘the ordering of the runes is … bewildering’, and so, contrary to the opinion that he expresses later, the order of the fuþark is based upon that used by the Mediterranean cultures; Moltke, pp. 6, 65. Owing to the disputable forms and meanings of the PG rune names, this pattern cannot be shown for all the pairs of names. It is shown in the following pairs (following Du¨wel, pp. 106–10): f, u; þ, a; i *isaz ‘ice’, j *jeran ‘(fruitful) year’; e *ehwaz ‘horse’, m *mannaz ‘man’; and l *laguz ‘water’ (or *laukaz ‘fertility’), n *ingwaz, the earth and fertility god Ing. Of those pairs with disputed meanings for either or both rune names the pattern can reasonably be constructed for r *raido¯ ‘ride, travel’, k *kaunan (?) ‘sickness (burning)’; g *gebo¯ ‘gift’, w *wunjo¯? ‘joy’; ¨ı *ı¯waz ‘yew’, p *perþo¯ ‘?holy or fruit tree’; d *dagaz ‘day’, o *o¯þalan ‘hereditary possession’. The rune paired with s *so¯wilo¯ ‘sun’, R *algiz, has no clear meaning. Only the names for h and n, *hagalaz ‘hail’, *naudiz ‘need, necessity’ (perhaps two forms of disaster) and t and b, *tı¯waz, the

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sky god Ty´r or merely ‘god’, *berkanan ‘birch (twig)’ (perhaps ‘god’ as opposed to the virga frugiferae arbori of Tacitus) speak against this interpretation. The usual criticism of making too much of the rune names (e.g. Page, pp. 11 f.) is thus answered by the demonstration of a system whereby these names have a demonstrable magico–religious use: the reading of omens. For earlier contributions that considered the rune names as paired see E. Brate, ‘Runradens ordningsfo¨ljd’, Arkiv fo¨r nordisk filologi 36, 1920, pp. 193–207; and F. von der Leyen, ‘Die germanische Runenreihe und ihre Namen’, Zeitschrift fu¨r Vo¨lkerkunde, Neue Folge 2, 1930, pp. 170–182. The ættir had ON names: Frøys ætt, Hagals ætt and Tys ætt and are so separated in the Vadstena rune–row. Like the Ogham aicme, they are named from the first character of each ætt: *fehu (later corrupted to Freyr), *hagalaz and *ıt¯waz; Elliot, p. 14, n. 2. Seebold has obviously borrowed this interpretation from the earlier, controversial work of Sigurd Agrell who sought to relate the ættir to the three spheres of Greek divinatory practice. S. Agrell, ‘Die spa¨tantike Alphabetmystik und die Runenreihe’, Kungliga Humanistika Vetenskaps– Samfundet i Lund A˚rsbera¨ttelse 1931–32, pp. 155–210. Seebold, pp. 536–538. The numerical system implied by his interpretation is not properly binary as is typical of near eastern 3 geomatria, but rather a combination of a binary and a triadic system of order 2 .3 The clearest Mediterranean connection between writing and magico-religious efficacy is found in the devotional alphabetic inscriptions of Este that have previously been linked with the characters on the Kitzbu¨hel sticks, and which in turn have been linked with the notae of Tacitus; R. Pittioni, ‘Zur Frage nach der Herkunft der Runen und ihrer Verdankerung in der Kultur der europa¨ischer Bronzezeit’, Beitra¨ge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 65, 1942, pp. 373–384; M. Lejeune, ‘Les Plaques de bronze votives du sanctuaire ve´ne`te d’Este’, Revue des etudes anciennes 55, 1953, pp. 58–112; O. Haas, ‘Die Herkunft der Runenschrift’, Orbis 14, 1965, pp. 216–236. Diod. Sic. 5, 31; Nicander fragment 117 in A. S. F. Gow and A. F. Schofield, Nicander, The Poems and Poetical Fragments, Cambridge 1953, p. 218; J.-L. Brunaux, The Celtic Gauls, Gods Rites and Sanctuaries, trans. D. Nash, London 1988, p. 133. Caesar, B.G. 6, 14; cf. Diod. Sic. 5, 28 which probably preserves another Gaulish orthographic suspicion. M. Lejeune et al., ‘Textes gaulois et gallo-romains en cursive latine: 3. Le plomb du Larzac’, Etudes celtiques 22, 1985, pp. 95–177 = idem, Le Plomb magique du Larzac et les sorcie`res gaulois, Paris 1985. See also P.-Y. Lambert, La Langue gauloise, Paris 1995, pp. 149–178. Pedersen, pp. 43 f.; Marstrander, pp. 108–113; Krause, p. 40. The Negau B inscription uses the Venetic X for ( ). Note that the value [n] attributed to the Ogham sign may be a product of the Irish manuscript tradition; D. McManus, A Guide to Ogam, Maynooth 1991, pp. 37 f. AcS 2, 970 f.; Musset, pp. 135, 177 f. Note that the rune name paired with this rune is also a tree name: the yew rune. Of course Marstrander, pp. 124 ff.; and Seebold, p. 540, probably go too far in seeking to link other Ogham and runic letter names. Pedersen, pp. 78 f., also links the name of the b rune with the equivalent Ogham letter (beithe ‘birch’), and points out the common use of families (aicme). The aicme and the order of Ogham are probably based, however, on theories of late Latin grammarians. Of course this rune name is not the only with a link to Celtic as the name of the r rune *raido¯ is also isoglossic only to Celtic terms. The two IE stems of Pokorny (IEW 861) would seem to preclude any attempt to prove an early loan in either direction for this term, though the complementary term *marhaz ‘(riding) horse’ seems to be a Celtic loan (and ultimately stems from a non-IE source); cf. Gaul. Marco-, Galatian markan (acc. sg. Pausanias 10, 19, 11), OIr. marc, Welsh march, Bret marc’h; OE mearh, ON marr, OHG marah. Tochmarc Etaine 18 (ed. E. Windisch, Irische Texte I) J. Loth, ‘Le Sort chez les Germains et les Celtes, Revue celtique 16, 1895, pp. 313 f. See, most recently, K. H. Schmidt, ‘The Celts and the Ethnogenesis of the Germanic Peoples’, Historische Sprachforschung 104, 1991, pp. 139–152. There have been many discussions since W. Grimm, Ueber deutsche Runen, Go¨ttingen 1821, p. 68, including G. Dume´zil, Les Dieux des Germains, Paris 1938, p. 24, n. 3; T. H. Wilbur, ‘The Word Rune’, Scandinavian Studies 29, 1957, pp. 12–18; and most recently Morris, ‘Northwest Germanic ru¯na >rune<’. A similar problem occurs with the isogloss of terms for ‘iron’ (Gaul. Isarno-, Goth. eisarn), yet as the Celts were clearly responsible for the transmission of ironworking technology to the North, Germanic ‘iron’ is almost certainly a loan from Celtic. Tac., Germ. 8; Hist. 4, 61; Krahe, p. 139. Latin vates ‘soothsayer’ is probably a loan from Celtic. Havamal 140; In Lebor Ogaim 5481 ff. Morris’ assertion that the Etruscan-based scripts are unlikely to have been the prototype for the runes because there was no differentiation between voiced and voiceless stops in Etruscan is unsatisfactory. Not only was there confusion of this kind in early Latin (between G and C) and in runic (especially between b and p), the North Italic scripts could differentiate between voiced and voiceless stops (as they clearly did in Venetic), just as they preserved O which represented a phoneme unknown in Etruscan. Morris, Runic and Mediterranean Epigraphy, pp. 6–7; Odenstedt, Origin, pp. 79–82; M. Lejeune, ‘Documents gaulois et para-gaulois de Cisalpine’, pp. 456 f. D’Arbois de Jubainville, p. 12, n. 1, and Dume´zil, p. 24, n. 3, suggest the reverse, with ‘rune’ designating the magical symbols, influencing the Celtic words.

Studia Neophil 71 (1999)

The Celts and the Origin of the Runic Script

57 V. Kruta, ‘Celtic Writing’, in S. Moscati et al. (eds), The Celts, London 1991, pp. 491–493. 58 Caesar, B.G. 1, 29: ‘tabulae … litteris graecis confectae’; W. Kra¨mer, ‘Graffiti auf Spa¨tlate`nekeramik aus Manching’, Germania 60, 1982, pp. 490–492; P.–M. Duval (ed.), Recueil des inscriptions gauloises, 3 vols, Paris 1985 ff., I, pp. 418–420, no. G–280; Kruta, p. 493. 59 Seebold has recently proposed a Latino-Faliscan prototype script; one with a hybrid of archaic Greek and Latin features. His novel but precarious orthographic synthesis relies, however, on a Celtic transmission occurring as early as the fourth century B.C.; E. Seebold, ‘Die Herkunft der Runenschrift’, in J. O. Askedal, H. Bjorvand and E. F. Halvorsen (eds), Festskrift til Ottar Grønvik, Oslo 1991, pp. 16–32. 60 Prosdocimi and Solinas, p. 56. 61 The Celtiberian letters have two exact correspondences to runic and ten orthographically similar characters, which, though they have different phonetic values, parallel forms that are otherwise peculiar to runic such as those of ¨ı and n. There are even Celtiberian inscriptions from the south of Gaul that include interspersed Greek letters. Odenstedt’s claim that the runes can only be based on one alphabet clearly does not hold if the prototype alphabet was one employed by Celtic speakers as even the various forms of Gallo-Latin retained s characters from older orthographies to represent characteristically Celtic phones such as [t ]; C. Ebel, Transalpine Gaul, Leiden 1976, pp. 30, 53–55; Odenstedt, Origin, pp. 155–158; J. F. Eska and D. E. Evans, ‘Continental Celtic’, in M. J. Ball (ed.), The Celtic Languages, London 1993, pp. 28 f. 62 One of the Manching inscriptions reads BOIOS though it is not clear whether it is orthographically Greek, Latin or North Italic. On the other hand, the adoption of the Lugano script by the invading Gauls has been seen as evidence of an ethno-cultural recognition by one noted epigraphist (Prosdocimi and Solinas, pp. 53–56). The other three North Italic Alpine scripts were used by Raetic speaking peoples. 63 Tac., Germ. 3; Kra¨mer, p. 498. 64 Caesar, B.G. 6, 4, 2; PG *walhaz, giving OE wealh ‘Welsh’, OHG walh.

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