Closing Speech, Fifth International Symposium on Runes and Runic Inscriptions, Jelling: August 2000

Transcription

1 Closing Speech, Fifth International Symposium on Runes and Runic Inscriptions, Jelling: August 2000 R.I. Page It is little over a month since I received a letter from Michael Lerche Nielsen. After the introductory courtesies it went on: Since you are the Nestor among the runologists present, it is my idea and hope that you will be willing to make a speech at the symposium dinner... Now you know who to blame. Naturally I was flattered. I was aware that among the Greeks who besieged Troy Nestor was the oldest and wisest. And I knew I had at any rate half the qualifications. I also knew that in later life many hundred years later in fact Nestor composed a Primary Russian Chronicle which mentioned Vikings, whereas I had produced a book called Chronicles of the Vikings. So of course I accepted. It was only later that I read Michael s next paragraph which listed the large number of people he could have invited to do this task had they not all been unable to attend the symposium for one reason or other. So I it was who had to be Nestor. Naturally I needed to refresh my mind about him so I set to reading the Iliad and the Odyssey, not of course in that Mediterranean European Union tongue that many regard as primary. I used the pure English version produced by George Chapman in 1611/1614, which so enchanted the great English poet John Keats that he composed one of his most celebrated sonnets on the subject. There I learned more than I had known hitherto about Nestor. In some of it I could understand why I was compared with this great man. He is introduced to the reader: 455

2 Up to both sweet-spoken Nestor stood, The cunning Pylian orator, whose tongue powred foorth a flood Of more-than-hony-sweet discourse. Sound judgment, I thought. Other bits of it were less agreeable. There was a continual stress on Nestor s advanced years: he reignd amongst the third-ag d men, we are told. Harsh age in his yeares fetters you, Achilles remarked with the usual tact that youth shows to age. Grave age pursues thee fast, commented another diplomat. And so on. Luckily Nestor was a good and skilful politician. In this I cannot compare with him, but I must try to follow his excellent precedent: tis the grace and office of our age. Nestor confidently gave thanks to the Gods for favours awarded him. I cannot aspire so high. Yet I would confidently give thanks, on behalf of all of us, for favours so delightfully awarded us by others. For the generous assistance of our sponsors, Jelling Kommune and Vejle Amt, who have helped us all to be here today to obey blacke night and fall now to our suppers. And to a number of funding bodies (Statens Humanistiske Forskningsråd and Letterstedska forening, Stockholm) who have supported this symposium. And of course we must thank most heartily those who organised our gathering, and in particular Marie Stoklund, Gillian Fellows-Jensen and Michael Lerche Nielsen who have put so much work to making it so successful. We thank you all most warmly. One of the most endearing aspects of Nestor to a man of my years is his selective memory. His mind, he keeps telling us, remaines in wonted vigor, by which I suspect he means he can remember what it is convenient to him to remember. One thing he remembers is that in his own young days everything was so much better than it was to be later on; a generalisation that all my contemporaries today will agree with. Indeed it is a generalisation that has been common in English, and presumably other languages, from early times. Alfred the Great noted it in the late ninth century, Archbishop Wulfstan in the early eleventh; Geoffrey Chaucer in the 1380s and Matthew Arnold on Dover Beach. Who could disagree with such great men? So I thought back on previous meetings of runologists to see if they confirmed my views. 456 R.I. Page

3 The first International Runic Symposium was held at Ann Arbor, Michigan, in It was organised by Claiborne Thompson, whose experience in meeting us all encouraged him to leave the groves of Academe shortly afterwards and flee to the groves of a Californian vineyard. There were many great men and women present, some alas who have since passed into that great Runic Corpus in the sky. Those two majestic figures, Erik Moltke and Sven B.F. Jansson Run-Janne; that most elegant runologist Aslak Liestøl and his Norwegian colleague Ingrid Sanness Johnsen; and Einar Haugen who linked old and new worlds. It was there I first met runologists who now form the base of our discipline: Elmer Antonsen, Helmer Gustavson, Marie Stoklund, Ute Schwab, François-Xavier Dillman some of them delight us with their presence here today. And there I renewed acquaintance with René Derolez and Klaus Düwel. Looking at the publication of the proceedings I observe a stress on the establishment, those who had worked on runes for some years. There were younger scholars there too but they were kept securely under control, allowed to comment but not to give papers. Nevertheless the younger scholars were active and audible, and their contributions recorded in a series of discussion reports that followed the papers. These were we have Claiborne Thompson s word for it original give-and-take warm laughter and barbed wit, and it is good that modern technology, by which I mean the tape-recorder, was at hand to preserve them. And perhaps equally good that modern technology behaved in its usual way and broke down half-way through. Nevertheless much was secured in this manner, and I note in particular the contributions of a youthful James Knirk (Oslo) which anticipated his future distinction as a runologist. The First International Symposium was a trial effort and there was no reason to think it would be followed by a second. But we reckoned without the persistence of our Swedish colleagues. In 1985 the Second Symposium was held in Sigtuna, and its proceedings published in 1987 in honour of Run-Janne s 80th birthday in November 1986, a Nestor indeed. Some of the young were promoted to top table status, with Michael Barnes, Chris Fell and Jan Paul Strid giving papers. Here I first met Peter Pieper who assured me that nobody in England would believe there existed a man of his name. To prove that there was he corrected me on a matter of Spiegelrunen, for which I have been ever grateful. Closing Speech 457

4 I spoke on Anglo-Saxon finds, being determined to make clear that there were English as well as Scandinavian and Continental Germanic runes. Marie drew our attention to the increasing number of early inscriptions from southern Jutland, something she has continued to do. Lena Peterson introduced the theme of personal names in inscriptions, something she has continued to do. And one of our most senior runologists, Karl Martin Nielsen, spoke on one of our most junior inscriptions, that of the Kensington stone brought James Knirk back to the fold, as he organised the Third Symposium at Grindaheim, Norway. The symposium papers were now divided by theme, from methodology to magic. This gave an added richness and perhaps (I am uncertain) an added rigour. The distinction that Erik Moltke had made in 1980 between feltrunolog and skrivebordsrunolog was eroded. We had historians, political, social and technological, name-scholars, linguisticians declaiming their approach to runes. But in contrast we had Michael Barnes warning us (and a fortiori them) about our amateur status: Even the most revered names of the discipline seem to have been autodidacts scholars educated in related fields who were willing or keen to have a go... This has had unfortunate results, not least of which is that runology sometimes bears an alarming resemblance to the British building trade: anyone who takes a fancy to runes and runic writing sets up in business and proclaims himself as competent to pronounce on the subject as the next man. He has a cruel tongue! His solution was, perhaps, the department of runology, bustling with runologists in training. Certainly I was an autodidact, and for all I know so was Michael. When I began working on English runes there was only Ralph Elliott before me, for Bruce Dickins had ceased work many decades before. There were few elementary works and none in English. I began with Helmut Arntz, Handbuch der Runenkunde 2. edition (im Felde), and it has been downhill all the way since. At Grindaheim the sinister word literacy appeared, as indeed it was to continue to appear in runic discussion, and there was even a mention of texts in the roman script as though these were somehow not as distinct from contemporary runes as all the best teachers had implied and indeed as the existence of bustling departments of runology might encourage us to believe. And new 458 R.I. Page

5 scholars poured over us again like a flood. Judy Jesch (I suspect an autodidact), Henrik Williams (who was the fruit of a bustling department), Jan Ragnar Hagland and Terje Spurkland (who were just natural geniuses). Then came Göttingen, a town, Heine assures us, berühmt durch ihre Würste und Universität. On the sausages I cannot comment. But I can commend the Universität. Aristotle, or someone of the same name, assures us that a good symposium has three sections, a beginning, a middle and an end. I recall vividly the beginning and the end of the Fourth Symposium. The beginning included a charming set of young musicians who interposed the speeches with a variety of works, including one that began as Handel s Halleluja chorus and ended as When the saints go marching in, perhaps intended as a myth to identify the chasm between our ideals and our achievements. The end was equally memorable, for it included an invitation from Klaus Düwel to help him mop up all the beer he had ordered to entertain the delegates with but had not managed to get them to finish off. I cannot remember what happened after that. In between was a brilliant series of papers which now fill 800 pages of a Hoops Reallexikon Ergänzungsband. There was an overall theme, Runeninschriften als Quellen interdisziplinärer Forschung, a further bringing together of subjects. The collection of speakers was remarkable: senior scholars Nestors in their own right like Ottar Grønvik. Lennart Elmevik and Ralph Elliott: established experts like Hans Frede Nielsen, Elmar Seebold, Elena Melnikova, Edith Marold; specialists in certain fields like Nancy Wicker, John Hines, Karin Seim and Anne Haavaldsen; young and therefore clever newcomers like Kathie Holman and Tineke Looijenga. And many others. Even new subjects. Runica manuscripta appeared, with Wilhelm Heizmann and David Parsons. And there was another desirable innovation. I didn t say a word. And now our latest symposium. I am reminded here of a wellknown English legal anecdote from the early years of the twentieth century. A brilliant if rather bumptious young advocate, F.E. Smith, had put a written presentation of a case before a senior judge. The judge was not impressed. Closing Speech 459

6 I have read your case, Mr Smith, and I am no wiser than I was when I started, he complained. Possibly not, My Lord, retorted Smith, but far better informed. As Nestor, of course, I can be no wiser than I was. But has the symposium left me better informed? In some ways certainly. What have I learned? a) Six easy ways to construct a bracteate b) What is the correct way to address a supernatural power c) Why runes are child s play d) How to invent a genuine tradition of an inscription s provenance e) Not to believe all we read on rune-stones. And many more. But against these think of what I have lost. After years of trying to adjust to the modern vocabulary of linguistics, of hoping to remember that I wasn t looking at letter forms but graphemes, that text (or rather discourse) consisted not of words but of lexis, that symbols did not represent sounds but phones or even phonemes, along comes Terje Spurkland and expounds an even more fearsome set of technical terms. I have just learned to distinguish the different fuþarks of Viking Age Scandinavia when up pops Michael Barnes to prove that none of them exist. I had just taken runology seriously when Jan Ragnar Hagland tries to convince me there was an early scholar in the field called did I hear it right? Bent Billy. Clearly our work has moved far in the last twenty years, and that owes much to the initiative that Claiborne Thompson took in Our progress began with a deliberation of senior, or perhaps senile, scholars, and it continues with Ibsen s admonition to them, De skal vite at ungdommen vil komme her og dundre på døren. We have been listening to some of the younger generation thundering. And I hope we have learnt from it. Runic studies in general have advanced amazingly in the last two decades. Side by side with these successive meetings there have been many initiatives in the field: James Knirk s invaluable Nytt om Runer; Uppsala s Runrön: the varied plans for collections of material at Kiel, Eichstätt, at Bergen, Trondheim, Oslo and Copenhagen. There is much in the past twenty years for us to be proud of. 460 R.I. Page

7 And an occasional sadness comes upon us, for René Derolez tells me his next article will be A Farewell to Runes. If we are going to ensure that there is no general farewell to runes, we must continue with our rigorous and far-reaching study of the script. But we would do well to remember that we must also strive to make our material more generally accessible, both to scholars in other fields and to the world at large. Runic study cannot survive as the preserve of professional runologists alone, however bustling their departments. Which gets me back to Nestor. He makes two statements which, I hope, all here will approve. He admits: But now yong men must wage These workes, and my joynts undergo the sad defects of age. And he is warned: The fit houre runnes now: Light dives out of date; At sacred feasts we must not sit too late. So Nestor sits down when all that could be said was said. And so do I. Closing Speech 461

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