SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Book Reviews ror
and some of the English novels of the eighteenth century would
prove more productive.
This book is translated into lucid and enjoyable English by
Professor Schach. Very useful bibliographical notes are appended,
and these are largely the work of the translator.
THE RUNES OF SWEDEN. By SVEN B. F. JANSSON.
by Peter G. Foote. Phoenix House, London, 1962.
G. TURVILLE-PETRE
Translated
168 pp.
The title of Professor Jansson's book is misleading. Instead
of dealing, as we have some right to expect, with the runes of
Sweden, he writes on the contents of (mainly) rune-stone
inscriptions from a loosely defined Sweden, nearly all from the
late Viking age. This is not, as the jacket claims, a "survey of
the unique wealth of Swedish runic inscriptions, from the first
centuries after the birth of Christ down almost to the present day"
The pre- and early Viking material is given summary treatment,
disposed of in thirteen pages (basic texts like those of the Vadstena
bracteate and the Lindholm amulet are omitted altogether):
the post-Viking inscriptions get eleven pages. The runes themselves
are largely ignored. There is no account of the forms of
characters in the twenty-four and sixteen letter Iuparks, their
sound values, the direction of writing, cryptic runes (relevant to
the R6k and Norum inscriptions included in the book), or of any
formal developments which took place in later times - Halsinge
runes are mentioned, but only with the obscure comment that
they are "the shorthand of the ancients". Consequently much
of the usefulness of the excellent illustrations disappears. The
sceptical reader is shown that the stones do exist, but is not
encouraged to try to read their texts. Even if he does, he is
unlikely to find much correspondence between the illustrations
and the texts quoted by Professor Jansson, since the latter are
usually heavily normalised. The occasional close transliteration
- as when we are told that the Lovhamra stone's i lukobri .'must
undoubtedly be read .. i Laughambri" - is likely, in the absence
of any serious account of the vagaries of runic spelling, to baffle
the beginner and to suggest to him that there is even more guesswork
in the interpretation of these texts than there actually is.
Under "Sweden" Professor Jansson includes those south-western
provinces of the modern kingdom which belong runologically to
Norway or Denmark, while at the same time he accepts Swedish