Anglo-Saxon Inscriptions Research Articles

Writing in a Speaking World: The Pragmatics of Literacy in Anglo-Saxon Inscriptions and Old English Poetry

Writing in a Speaking World: The Pragmatics of Literacy in Anglo-Saxon Inscriptions and Old English Poetry

Writing in a Speaking World: The Pragmatics of Literacy in Anglo-Saxon Inscriptions and Old English Poetry

Writing in a Speaking World: The Pragmatics of Literacy in Anglo-Saxon Inscriptions and Old English Poetry

PETER ORTON. Writing in a Speaking World: The Pragmatics of Literacy in Anglo-Saxon Inscriptions and Old English Poetry

PETER ORTON. Writing in a Speaking World: The Pragmatics of Literacy in Anglo-Saxon Inscriptions and Old English Poetry

Runes and Verse: The Medialities of Early Scandinavian Poetry

AbstractThe paper discusses a number of versified runic inscriptions, mainly from Scandinavia, and from ca. 400 to 1400 AD, to explore what they reveal about the forms and functions of early Scandinavian poetry outside the manuscript tradition. With a particular focus on ‘authors’ and ‘audiences’, as defined by Bredehoft in his work on Anglo-Saxon inscriptions, the paper elucidates the potential oral contexts of Scandinavian runic verse and concludes that, although runic writing is a form of literacy, the examples show that for most of its history it is associated with various kinds of oral context. Runic verse shows that inscriptions provide one of the best ways into understanding the Scandinavian oral tradition, not only before the arrival of manuscript literacy, but also during its infancy.

Crosses in Inscriptions

This paper analyses the use of crosses appearing in Anglo-Saxon inscriptions. The focus of the discussion is on whether or not the use of crosses can be associated with factors such as the date or function of the inscribed object, the material the object is made from, or the language used in its text. There are 323 separate non-runic texts occurring on 251 objects, giving a reasonably sized body of material to work on. The conclusion reached is that it seems to be the function of an inscribed object that is of most importance in whether or not a cross appears in the text.

The Staffordshire Hoard Inscription and Other Biblical Texts in Anglo-Saxon Inscriptions

The recently found inscribed strip from the Staffordshire Hoard contains a text taken from the Bible. This text is discussed in the light of the other biblical texts, some twenty in number, which occur on Anglo-Saxon inscribed objects. The discussion includes the languages and scripts used in the texts, and also the materials, likely functions and dates of the inscribed objects.