the Viking Age was predominantly oral: it was composed, performed and transmitted
without the benefit of writing. In the long run, such poetry could only survive if it was
recorded in writing, and we have to rely heavily on later written evidence for our
knowledge of Viking Age poetry (Roesdahl and Meulengracht Sørensen 2003 : 134 – 40 ).
It is true that runes were used to record snatches of verse on memorial stones from the
Viking Age, like the earlier Tune memorial, but these texts are short, highly restricted
in genre and style, and not especially interesting as poetry. Such inscriptions show
poetry in action, verse forms put to work in the more serious business of commemorat-
ing the dead, and of establishing and reinforcing the kin group and local hierarchies.
Two stones still standing on the assembly site at Bällsta in Uppland, Sweden, contain
this verse in fornyrðislag, framed by the names of three men who commissioned the
monument and a fourth who carved the runes:
Munu æigi mærki
mæii verða,
þan Ulfs syni
æfti gærðu,
snialli sveina,
at sinn faður.
Ræistu stæina
ok staf unnu
auk inn mikla
at iartæiknum.
Auk Gyriði
gats at veri.
Þy man i grati
getit lata.There shall no mightier
memorials be found
than those Ulv’s sons
set up after him,
active lads
after their father.
They raised the stones
and worked the staff
also, the mighty one,
as marks of honour.
Likewise Gyrid
loved her husband.
So in mourning
she will have it mentioned.
( Jansson 1987 : 121 )Such occasional uses of verse reflect a culture whose habit of thinking was poetical, one
in which it came naturally to embellish important messages with well-worn verse forms
(Wulf 2003 ). That such inscriptions are poetic embellishment, rather than ‘poetry’,
–– Judith Jesch ––