10. Runic inscriptions
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Runic inscriptions can be incorporated into the structure using the same tables as discussed for textual materials. Although there is a one-to-one correspondence between the text and the object in most cases for inscriptions, for the sake of consistency the text is treated distinctly from the material object. As a unique object containing a primary witness of a text, a runic inscription is taken as equivalent to a manuscript. The sides of the inscription which may contain text are taken as equivalent as pages in a manuscript, using the numbering (usually alphabetic) from the standard edition of the inscription. The whole inscription is taken as the textual unit which is to be analysed or linked to religious phenomena in the same way as chapters or stanzas for manuscript texts. The structure may be represented as in Figure 12 using the runestone from Glavendrup, Fyn as an example.
Figure 12: Links between runic texts and objects
The text can be treated in the same way as other units of text such as chapters and stanzas. For example, runic inscriptions that mention gods and other named beings can be incorporated into the structure in the same way as place names and attributes: DR Fyn 26 (Glavendrup, formerly DR 209) appears to call upon Thor to consecrate the runes. The reference to Thor can be built into the structure as represented in Figure 13.
Some words, particularly in older inscriptions, appear to have some kind of religious or magical significance, including the nouns alu ‘ale’, laukar ‘leek’ and verb vígja ‘consecrate’. These can also appear without any apparent significance, but where some significance is presumed because the word is used in isolation or with other words suggesting religious or magical significance, these can be linked by a table to the words in the texts. For the purposes of simplicity, we can extend the use of the ‘beings’ table to cover other potentially religious phenomena and concepts, as shown in Figure 13.
Figure 13: Links between runic inscriptions, beings and attributes
These structures can be used to generate maps and links to various phenomena associated with a god or a practice, such as all inscriptions mentioning Thor, or all inscriptions mentioning consecration, or a combination of the two.