Nytt om runer

New Runic Finds from Orkney

Rune-stone from Skaill Home Farm, Sandwick

In August 1996 a derelict stone building was being demolished at Skaill Home Farm, Sandwick (NGR HY 228185). One of the workmen spotted lines cut on the edge of one of its slabs. He thought they might be runes and, despite the mockery of some of his fellow-workers, reported the find. Runes were confirmed and the stone was declared treasure trove under Scots law. It was allocated to the Tankerness House Museum, Kirkwall: no. 1997.125.

The stone is roughly rectangular, c. 95 x 25 x 6-8 cm., of sedimentary sandstone. It has two sets of runes on its long edges, a main text in bold lettering occupying most of the front, and a second, faint text, graffito-like, on the back. The stone has partly laminated. Some time ago its top edge flaked away, removing the very tops of the runes of the main text. More recently, indeed perhaps during demolition, a further sliver of the top surface split off, destroying the greater part of all runes but the first eight, which can be read þurfinr:r. All that is left of the rest of this inscription are fragments of verticals with occasional twigs and parts of bows, so transliteration is impracticable. Presumably the text was a raiser or a carver formula, Þorfinnr reisti ... or Þorfinnr risti/reist .... The only diagnostic rune form is a short-twig n.

The back of the stone has, towards its left-hand edge, a group of very lightly cut runes, fifteen verticals visible but damaged by a deep groove that runs lengthwise roughly centrally along the edge, destroying the mid-sections of letters. There are also cavities and cracks in the stone and general damage to the whole surface, so rune forms are hard or impossible to identify. The first and last appear to be k but nothing between is certain except for an r. Indeed it is unclear if these runes constituted a formal inscription or were only casual graffiti.

Rune-stone found at Whitemill Bay, Sanday

In the summer of 1996 a small piece of sandstone bearing what appear to be runes was found on the beach at Whitemill Bay on the north coast of Sanday, Orkney (NGR HY approx. 686468). It was subsequently taken to Belsair Guest House, Kettletoft, Sanday, where it was left on a window-sill together with a collection of beach pebbles. In October 1996 a custodian of Tankerness House Museum, Kirkwall, who happened to be staying in the Belsair, noticed the piece of sandstone with its engravings and removed it to the museum for safe keeping.

The stone, which measures 123 x 55 x 38 mm., is incised with two clear runic characters and several verticals. Reading from left to right we have what appears to be the remains of a vertical, followed by a faint vertical scratch and a further vertical at more or less full height. There is then a u and a long-branch m, and finally yet another vertical set some way from the top and bottom of the surface. The characters are unusually deeply cut, the u and m, for example, having a depth of up to 10 mm. in places even though the stone is weathered. The weathering perhaps argues for authenticity despite the somewhat unusual find circumstances, though it is hard to determine the kind of inscription of which these runes might once have been part. There are clear breaks on the stone, suggesting that it is likely to be a fragment of what was once a larger object. The characters appear to have been carved before the fragment broke off.

Bone fragments with runes from Earl's Bu at Orphir, Mainland

It has recently been noticed that several of a large number of cattle-rib fragments excavated in 1986 from the Earl's Bu site at Orphir on the Orkney Mainland (NGR HY 341047) bear runes or incisions not incompatible with runes. The incised fragments are of various sizes, though two of the largest measure no more than 34 x 31 x 12 and 51 x 25 x 18 mm. maximum. The pieces do not appear to be contiguous, and thus nothing in the way of a text emerges. Two verticals, followed by an o, a further vertical, two short-twig ss (judging from their height) and an overcut r can be discerned on the 51 mm. surface. Apart from these, and what may be a further o or, if read the other way up, an f standing on its own on the 34 x 31 x 12 mm. fragment, only verticals - few if any complete - are to be seen. In total, there appear to be seven incised pieces of bone, though by no means all the incisions need be runic, and some may be no more than accidental scratches.

The significance of this discovery - though it comes some eleven years after the material was excavated - is that taken together with the Orphir I and II inscriptions (see, e.g., Jan Ragnar Hagland, "Two Runic Inscriptions from Orphir, Orkney", in The Viking Age in Caithness, Orkney and the North Atlantic, eds. C. Batey et al., Edinburgh 1993, 370-74), it suggests at least a modicum of runic activity at a single site. That in turn perhaps points to a wider use of runes in medieval Orkney than scholars have so far been inclined to suppose (Orphir I with its dotted runes is almost certainly medieval, and Orphir II, like the current fragments, is from an eleventh to thirteenth-century midden). It is worth pointing out in this context that a stone in the south side of the apse of the old round church at Orphir bears two incised characters. They were first reported by J. Storer Clouston in a letter to Magnus Olsen (25.10.1927), but seem subsequently to have been ignored. Clouston took them to be runes. To us they appear at best "rune-like". If runes, they consist of a k^f bind-rune with reversed k, followed to the right by a reversed k on its own, the branch of which cuts across the lower branch of f. Neither the appearance of these characters, nor Clouston's suggested interpretation: Guð faðir Kristi, is reassuring. Conceivably though - if the carving is medieval - we have someone from a milieu in which at least a number of people knew and could use runes attempting a rough-and-ready graffito.

Michael P. Barnes, Department of Scandinavian Studies, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, England
R. I. Page, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

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