Abecedarium Nordmannicum
The fourth text usually mentioned alongside the rune poems, and the odd one out. It runs the sixteen Younger Futhark runes in order across three lines, but it is a mnemonic list rather than a poem with a stanza per rune: it says almost nothing about what the names mean, which is why most accounts leave it out.
- Language
- Old Saxon, with Old High German and Old Norse forms
- Alphabet described
- Younger Futhark
- Date
- 9th century
- Lines
- 3
- Manuscript
- Codex Sangallensis 878, p. 321, probably written at Fulda. The text was destroyed in the 1820s when Ildefons von Arx, the librarian at St Gallen, applied chemical reagents to the page, not to preserve it but to force the faded writing to show for a moment. Every modern edition therefore depends on drawings von Arx made himself, which Wilhelm Grimm published: one taken before the reagents were used, in Über deutsche Runen (1821), and one recording what could be glimpsed while they were working, in Zur Literatur der Runen (1828). The two witness different things and neither supersedes the other. The 1821 drawing shows the page undamaged, but only what the naked eye could make out on it. The 1828 drawing is the fuller record of the text, because the reagents briefly brought up letters that had not been legible before, which is why editions lean on it. Popular accounts credit the drawing to Grimm, who published it rather than made it.
About the text below
The full text
- 1Feu, Ur, Thuris, Os, Rat
Feu forman, Ur after, Thuris thritten stabu, Os is himo oboro, Rat endost ritan.
Feu first, Ur after it, Thuris the third stave, Os follows next to it, Rat written last of these.
Dickins's reading. Gallée (1894) has ist imo for is himo and uuritan for ritan. The word read as imo is von Arx's; the drawing has also been read as hiemo, heno or keno, none of which means anything.
- 2Chaon, Hagal, Naut, Is, Ar, Sol
Chaon thanne cliuot. Hagal, Naut habet Is, Ar endi Sol.
Chaon follows after that. Hagal, Naut has Is, Ar and Sol after them.
The second line simply carries the row forward. Note how little is being claimed: we are told nothing about any of these runes beyond where each sits in the sequence.
- 3Tiu, Brica, Man, Lagu, Yr
Tiu, Brica endi Man midi, Lagu the leohto, Yr al bihabet.
Tiu, Brica and Man in the middle, Lagu the bright, and Yr closes the whole row.
Tiu is an editorial emendation filling a gap in the drawing. "Lagu the bright" is the one place in the whole text where a rune name is given anything resembling a description rather than a position.