Kvinneby amulet
A small square copper plate carrying about 143 runes and an engraving of a fish. Among the clearest evidence anywhere that runes were used to ask for protection.
At a glance
- Alphabet
- Younger Futhark
- Date
- 11th century
- Found at
- Södra Kvinneby, Öland, Sweden
- Signature
- Öl SAS1989;43
The text
Why none is reproduced here.
Not reproduced. This inscription is either too long to quote in full or its reading is contested enough that printing one transliteration would suggest a settled text where there is not one. Look it up under Öl SAS1989;43 in the standard catalogues, where the readings are given with their apparatus.
Discovery
Found in the 1950s during excavation at Södra Kvinneby on Öland. It is a copper plate roughly five centimetres square, pierced so it could be worn, and the text runs boustrophedon (alternating direction line by line) around a scratched figure of a fish whose relation to the words is unclear.
Why it matters
It is one of the longest and best-preserved amulet texts of its period, and it names a man, Bófi, invokes protection against evil, and appears to call on Þórr and his hammer. Where most claims about runic magic rest on inference from context, this object states its purpose in words.
Common misconceptions
Claims about this object that circulate widely and do not hold up.
The detailed reading is hard, and there have been several serious and incompatible attempts at it. That the text is protective is not in doubt; the specific translations quoted online usually pick one scholar's reconstruction without saying which.
Runes attested here (1)
Every dictionary entry that cites this object, with the reason it gives.
- ÞurisazElder
A copper amulet whose Younger Futhark text invokes protection against a hostile being; among the clearest evidence for runes used apotropaically.
Sources
Full references on the sources page.