Westeremden yew-stick
A piece of yew from a Frisian terp carrying 41 characters: the longest runic text in the Frisian corpus, and the object behind a claim about the rune stan that does not survive contact with it.
At a glance
- Alphabet
- Anglo-Saxon Futhorc
- Date
- Second half of the 8th century
- Found at
- Westeremden, Groningen, Netherlands
- Signature
- None given here. English, Frisian and Continental material is catalogued outside the Rundata tradition altogether; elsewhere a signature is left off only where we could not verify one. Either way the object is cited by name and findspot.
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 its name in the standard catalogues, where the readings are given with their apparatus.
Discovery
Found in 1917 at Westeremden in Groningen, in the man-made dwelling mounds of the Frisian coast, whose waterlogged soil preserves wood in the way the Bergen wharf does. It is generally taken to be part of a weaving implement. Like all Frisian material it carries no Rundata signature, because the Frisian corpus is catalogued separately from the Scandinavian one.
Why it matters
At 41 characters over three lines it is the longest Frisian runic inscription there is, in a corpus where most objects carry a word or two. That makes it the main evidence that the futhorc was doing sustained work on the Continental side of the North Sea and not only in England. It also uses Spiegelrunen (runes drawn together with their own mirror image), which is where its complications start.
Common misconceptions
Claims about this object that circulate widely and do not hold up.
The stick is cited as inscriptional attestation for the Northumbrian rune stan. The shapes in question are better explained as Spiegelrunen (mirrored forms of ᛒ and ᛈ that happen to resemble a variant of stan), which leaves stan a manuscript character after all.
Full translations circulate and should not be trusted. The reading of the text is contested line by line, and no transliteration is given here for that reason; the interpretations on offer differ over word division before they differ over meaning.
Runes attested here (2)
Every dictionary entry that cites this object, with the reason it gives.
- ÆscFuthorc
The longest Frisian runic text, and the same Continental evidence as the Arum sword for this rune doing its ordinary job on both sides of the North Sea.
- StanFuthorc
The one object regularly offered as inscriptional evidence for this rune. The shapes on it are better read as Spiegelrunen, which is why stan stays a manuscript character.
Sources
Full references on the sources page.