Stephen Pollington

It can be tricky to find books on this topic that are both accessible and authoritative. Some can be so academic and dense that (if you can even get your hands on them) they're hard to parse without a degree in linguistics, while others tend to devolve into esoteric conjecture. Amidst those extremes this book was a delightful find and proved to be exactly what it claims to be: an affordable, comprehensive and accessible introduction and reference work.

For its 82 pages I found it to be show more immensely enlightening and surprisingly thorough in the information it manages to cover in that space. What runes are, how they varied across the cultures that used them, and how and why they were used are all covered. Pollington clearly knows his subject matter well and treats it with great respect. While he provides a lot of historical and archaeological examples of runic inscriptions and uses those to illustrate what we do know, he also takes care to point out that there is much that is still conjecture, and much that we can never know for certain. The linguistic details were fascinating, but my favourite aspect was certainly the glimpses into the culture and worldview of the people groups that used these runes.

Loved this particular Old English rune-poem for ᛡ:

Iar byþ eafix and ðeah a bruceþ
fodres on foldan, hafaþ fægerne eard
wætre beworpen, ðær he wynnum leofaþ.

Beaver is a riverfish yet it always enjoys
Food on land, has a fine dwelling
Surrounded by water where it lives happily

Isn't that just wholesome? show less

An excellent book, not just because I get a ‘thank you’ in the preface - lol!

An excellent work if you want to compare the Anglo-Saxon English with the modern translation (and check out a few other translators attempts to see if artistic licence crept in). Stephen's ability to grasp the old language and get the meaning from it is unerring; he can really put across what it must have felt like to have lived in those times.

A fine academic introduction to runes. For such a short book, it's chock full onf information on what is known about the ancient writing systems.

Cracking book, bringing together the texts of some fascinating manuscripts in an accessible format.Compulsory reading for cunning folk.