Codex Sangallensis 878

Codex Sangallensis 878 is a manuscript kept in the library of the Abbey of St. Gall. It dates to the 9th century and probably originates in Fulda. It contains mainly excerpts of grammatical texts, including the Ars minor and Ars maior of Aelius Donatus, the grammar of Priscian, the Etymologiae of Isidore of Sevilla and the grammar of Alcuin. Furthermore, it contains a presentation of the Greek alphabet, the Hebrew alphabet, the Anglo-Saxon runes and the Scandinavian Younger Futhark, the latter in the form of a short rune poem known as the Abecedarium Nordmannicum.

Bischoff (1980) considers the manuscript a personal collection or brevarium of Walahfrid Strabo's, who from 827 was in Fulda as a student of Hrabanus Maurus, and from 838 was abbot of the Reichenau Abbey. Hrabanus himself is known to have been interested in runes, and he is credited with the treatise Hrabani Mauri abbatis fuldensis, de inventione linguarum ab Hebraea usque ad Theodiscam ("on the invention of languages, from Hebrew to German"), identifying the Hebrew and Germanic ("Theodish") languages with their respective alphabets.

The Abecedarium Nordmannicum

The text of the rune poem was unfortunately destroyed in the 19th century by chemicals intended for its preservation. It survives in a 1828 drawing by Wilhelm Grimm. Under a heading ABECEDARIUM NORD it presents the Younger Futhark in three lines, read by Derolez (1965) as:

ᚠ feu forman | ᚢ ur after | ᚦ thuris thriten | ᚭ os ist imo |ᚱ rat end

                                       stabu |        oboro | os uuritan

ᚴ chaon thanne  ᚼ hagal ᚾ naut habet |ᛁ is ᛅ ar ᛋ endi sol

  diuet/cliuot

ᛐ [tiu] ᛒ brica ᛙ endi man | ᛚ lagu the leohto | ᛦ yr al bihabet

               midi

Linguistically, the text is a mixture of Old Norse, Old Saxon and Old High German. It is probably based on a Danish original, maybe imported from Haithabu to Lower Germany, and adapted to the idiom of its recipients. The background of the Carolingian notation of Norse runes is that of intensified contacts between the Frankish Empire and Denmark which necessitated interpreters for economic and political exchanges.

The content of the poem are the names of the runes, connected by a few additional alliterating words as mnemonical aids. Differences in rune names are feu for fe, rat for reidh (as Anglo-Saxon rad), chaon for kaun, uncertain tiu for tyr (as Anglo-Saxon tiw), man for madr (as Anglo-Saxon), lagu for logr (as Anglo-Saxon).

References

• Bernhard Bischoff, Die südostdeutschen Schreibschulen und Bibliotheken in der Karolingerzeit, Wiesbaden (1980)
• Thomas Birkmann, Codex Sangallensis und die Entwicklung der Runenreihe im Jüngeren Futhark, in: Alemannien und der Norden, ed. Naumann (2004), 213-223
• René Derolez, Scandinavian runes in continental manuscripts, in: Bessinger, Creeds (eds.) Franciplegius, New York (1965).