THE Ribe cranium, whose inscription invokes a divine triad for help against dwarfstroke, seems to be the earliest datable example of a runic charm against some form of pain or disease. The use of runes in explicit healing magic thus appears to be comparatively late. Most examples of such finds are also Scandinavian, although some restorative formulas and healing charms are recorded in runic letters in England and other parts of Europe. Nonetheless leechcraft, the medieval art of healing, often seems to have had less to do withmodern notions of medicine than with the supernatural.

In the Middle Ages, after all, sickness was commonly ascribed to the intervention of evil spirits who were thought to enter the body via any available orifice or shoot invisible darts of poison. The Anglo-Saxon metrical charm for a sudden stitch discussed in chapter 2 contained a spell to expel ‘elf shot’ repeating the phrase: ‘Out little spear, if herein it be.’ Other Anglo-Saxon charms recorded in medieval manuscripts invoke the agency of disease they are attempting to drive out, e.g.:

Flying venom, i.e. airborne contagion, and evil-minded elves, trolls and dwarfs were thought to roam the landscape, and once a person had succumbed to the spirits of disease and become infected, the sickness was commonly conceived of as a malevolent spirit which had to be cast out from the body.