Ribe skull fragment
A piece of human skull, cut with a hole for wearing and covered in runes. It is probably the oldest surviving text in a younger futhark, and it was written while the alphabet was still losing runes: two of its characters are the old Elder Futhark shapes.
At a glance
- Alphabet
- Younger Futhark
- Date
- c. AD 725
- Found at
- Ribe, Jutland, Denmark
- Signature
- DR EM85;151B
The text
Transliteration in the conventional runological form. Translations on this site are our own and deliberately literal.
ulfuʀ auk uþin auk hutiuʀ · hialb buris uiþʀ · þaima uiarki auk tuirkuniu · buur
Discovery
Excavated in 1973 at Ribe in Jutland, the oldest town in Denmark, from a layer dated to around AD 725. It is a fragment of the top of a human cranium, roughly six by eight and a half centimetres, with a hole bored through it so that it could be carried or worn. That is an unusual object to write on, and the hole is the main reason it is generally read as an amulet rather than as a piece of writing that happens to be on bone.
Why it matters
It dates the single strangest event in runic history. Somewhere between AD 700 and 800 Scandinavia cut its alphabet from twenty-four runes to sixteen, and this fragment is the clearest object anyone can point at from inside that change: the text is already written in a younger futhark, but two of its characters, h and m, are still the Elder Futhark shapes ᚺ and ᛗ rather than the reduced Viking-Age forms. It is a transitional alphabet caught mid-transition, and probably the oldest younger-futhark text there is.
Common misconceptions
Claims about this object that circulate widely and do not hold up.
The reading has changed more than once and confident translations should be treated accordingly. Individual runes were disputed for decades, and Nordström revised two of them in 2021 by going over the surface with a digital microscope. The text given above is the conventional reading; Nordström reads burins where it has buris, and þaim tuiarki where it has þaima uiarki. So even the transliteration is not fully settled. The general shape (three names invoked, then a request for help against a hostile being) has held up; the wording has not.
A runic text on a human skull sounds like the clearest evidence imaginable for runic magic, and it is often used that way. It is good evidence that this particular object was an amulet. It is not evidence about runic writing generally: the Ribe excavations also produced ordinary combs, coins and craft debris, and the same site's runic material sits in the middle of a trading town, not a cult site.
Runes attested here (2)
Every dictionary entry that cites this object, with the reason it gives.
- HagallYounger
Writes this rune with the old Elder Futhark shape ᚺ rather than the Viking-Age ᚼ, in a text otherwise already in a younger futhark: the reduction caught partway through.
- MaðrYounger
Still uses the Elder Futhark ᛗ here rather than the reduced ᛘ maðr, which is one of the two places this object shows the alphabet mid-reduction.
Sources
Full references on the sources page.