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Title: Who wrote the rune poems? Post by: Vixen on April 06, 2011, 08:35:44 AM I have tried to search online but know where seems to have an answer, sorry if this seems like a silly question but I am still trying to get my head round all of the different texts.
Thanx Vixen Title: Re: Who wrote the rune poems? Post by: Grymdycche on April 16, 2011, 08:47:50 AM The short and simple answer is, no one knows. They're anonymous, much as the classic story of Beowulf is.
The poems are ancient, and the oldest sources we do have have likely been copied down from still older sources. Further compounding the question is the fact that there are at least 3 different sets of poems; Anglo-Saxon (AKA Old English), Norwegian, and Icelandic.. All of them differ to some degree, sometimes greatly. For example, none of them agree as to what Uruz means - Ox, drizzle, or slag? (If you're wondering where the name "Uruz" comes from, it's also a scholarly educated guess, reconstructed from an originating Old German language.. whether high or low german though I don't recall, if either even.) In almost all cases, as well, the OERP (Old English Rune Poem) has different names for the runes than do the NRP and the IRP, in the which the latter two, in most cases agree. Someone in old Anglo-Saxon England was a busy bee, reworking many of the runes' names and sometimes meanings. Whether or not there was once a single, original unifying poem that later diverged is really anyone's guess. If there was, it'd probably be around 2,000 years old .. give or take a couple of centuries. |