The Logographic Power of the Runes in the Old English <i>Rune Poem</i>

Abstract The critical reception of the Old English Rune Poem has gradually shifted: at first dismissed as a simplistic rune mnemonic, in the past 50 years it has received increasingly appreciative readings. Scholars have gone from viewing the poem as a source of Germanic rune knowledge to considering its subtle riddling and gnomic messages. As yet unremarked, however, is the fact that its various meditations on the names of the runes avoid mentioning the shape of the rune characters themselves. Indeed, some descriptions (such as that for the ūr rune) run counter to the shape of the actual runic character. By concentrating on how the thing denoted by the rune name is known or used, the Rune Poem insists upon the power of the runes as logographs. As a result, while the poem survives in a textual context, it evokes an anthropocentric world that paradoxically conceives of runes as operating more in the realm of speech than of writing.