Rune poem

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Rune poems

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Íslenska rúnakvæðið (Icelandic Rune Poem)

Rune poems are poems that list the letters of runic alphabets while providing an explanatory poetic stanza for each letter. Four different poems from before the mid-20th century have been preserved: the Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem, the Norwegian Rune Poem, the Icelandic Rune Poem and the Swedish Rune Poem.

The Icelandic and Norwegian poems list 16 Younger Futhark runes, while the Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem lists 29 Anglo-Saxon runes.^{[citation needed]} Each poem differs in poetic verse, but they contain numerous parallels between one another. Further, the poems provide references to figures from Norse and Anglo-Saxon paganism, the latter included alongside Christian references. A list of rune names is also recorded in the Abecedarium Nordmannicum, a 9th-century manuscript, but whether this can be called a poem or not is a matter of some debate.

The rune poems have been theorized as having been mnemonic devices that allowed the user to remember the order and names of each letter of the alphabet and may have been a catalog of important cultural information, memorably arranged; comparable with the Old English sayings, Gnomic poetry, and Old Norse poetry of wisdom and learning.^[1]