Thames scramasax

Alphabet

Anglo-Saxon Futhorc

Date

10th century

Found at

Found in the River Thames at Battersea, London

Now

British Museum

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.

f u þ o r c g w h n i j ï p x s t b e · ŋ d l m œ · a æ y ea · beagnoþ

• The seax is often said to be missing a rune, on the grounds that the Old English Rune Poem covers 29 and this carries 28. The rune it lacks is ior, which Page classes a pseudo-rune, a character of the manuscript rows that turns up in no inscription at all. Counted against the runes anyone actually cut, the seax is a complete row rather than a defective one, and the 28-rune futhorc is a recognised stage of the alphabet in its own right.

  ContestedPage 1999; Barnes 2012

• The seax is sometimes taken as evidence for a rival English ordering of the futhorc. Page reads the irregularity differently, and the object supports him: the sixteenth rune is visibly small and squeezed in as an afterthought, having been missed, and the disordered stretch agrees with nothing else. This looks like a designer unfamiliar with runic writing rather than a competing tradition, unlike the Elder Futhark, where several independent witnesses disagree consistently.

  ContestedPage 1999; Barnes 2012

• UrFuthorc

  A single-edged knife inlaid with a 28-rune futhorc row plus its owner’s name, Beagnoth: the fullest row surviving in an inscription rather than a manuscript. It is the best inscriptional evidence for the alphabet’s order in England, and a flawed witness to it: its runes 20–24 run in a sequence found nowhere else, and the smith made outright layout errors, squeezing in a missed s at the sixteenth position. Page suggests whoever designed the inscription was not comfortable with runic writing. The 28 runes themselves are a complete row; the one the poem has and this does not is ior, which no inscription uses.

• OsFuthorc

  Shows this rune in its expected fourth position, confirming the English order.

• CenFuthorc

  Sixth in the inlaid futhorc row.

• HæglFuthorc

  The inlaid row shows the English double-barred form.

• IsFuthorc

  Eleventh in the inlaid row.

• GerFuthorc

  Shows the distinctive English form of the rune.

• EohFuthorc

  Present in the row despite being of little practical use in writing.

• PeorðFuthorc

  Present in the row, giving the shape if not the meaning.

• Eolh-secgFuthorc

  Present in the row in its expected position.

• TirFuthorc

  Seventeenth in the inlaid futhorc row.

• EhFuthorc

  Nineteenth in the inlaid row.

• LaguFuthorc

  Twenty-second in the inlaid row, which puts ing and dæg ahead of it where the rune poem does not. That is worth little as evidence: the position falls inside runes 20–24 of the seax, a five-rune stretch whose order matches no other source and is usually put down to the carver rather than to an English tradition.

• IngFuthorc

  Present in the row.

• EþelFuthorc

  Present in the row.

• DægFuthorc

  Present in the row.

• AcFuthorc

  One of the English additions present in the inlaid row.

• YrFuthorc

  Present among the English additions in the inlaid row.

• EarFuthorc

  Closes the inlaid futhorc row.

Full references on the sources page.