2. Report from the editors’ meeting
This is not currently part of the peer-reviewed material of the project. Do not cite as a research publication.
Although some time was taken up with discussion of general editorial principles and procedures, most discussion concerned publication issues (see below), and the state of readiness of the first two volumes to be published, Vols. 7 and 6.
Volume 7, Poetry on Christian Subjects, will be the first to be published and should appear in 2006. Margaret Clunies Ross is the responsible general editor. The deadline for submission to Brepols, according to our contract, is the end of November 2005. Margaret reported that she will probably not be able to meet this deadline, as there have been a small number of unexpected setbacks among the contributing editors, mostly of a personal kind, which have delayed submission. However, copy for most of the poetry in Volume 7 has now been received and Margaret is going through it, poem by poem. Questions have then to be discussed with the contributing editors and all general editors must check the texts before they are finalised. These quality controls are time-consuming but will result in a product that is as accurate and free from error as possible. An Introduction and indices also have to be prepared. Data entry of material for Vol. 7 began in Sydney in June and a research assistant, Emily Baynham, is working to enter material for us one day a week. Margaret estimates the volume will be ready to submit to Brepols by the end of April 2006.
The general editors had an extensive discussion about Volume 6, Runic Poetry, led by Edith Marold, the editor responsible for this volume. Other contributors to this volume are Hans-Peter Naumann (for the Swedish inscriptions) and Ray Page (the Norwegian and Icelandic Rune Poems). There was considerable discussion of what should be included and what excluded from the runic corpus (and why), and a definitive list resulted. As we intend to publish images of all the runic inscriptions as well as the texts, translations, and notes, it has been necessary to provide an exhaustive list of the actual location of the objects (if they still exist) and obtain photographs of them. This also necessitates gaining permission to reproduce the images both in the hard copy and the electronic edition. Some images Edith already has, others will be given us free of charge, for which we are very thankful, but some will have to be purchased. Margaret has obtained a small grant of money for this purpose. Part of it has already been used to fund Tarrin to travel to various parts of Sweden to photograph runestones in situ.
Edith estimates the runic volume will be ready to send to Brepols by October 2006.