MANY objects once thought of as having magical powers feature texts written in runes, providing sources that today shed light on the lives and experiences of the northern European peoples the ancient Romans first called Germans. These pre-Christian Germanic or Teutonic folk were not just early Germans or Scandinavians, though; they are the ancestors of several modern nations in Europe and beyond – from England and Holland to Austria and Germany and up to the Nordic countries, from North America to Australasia as well – and also include tribes who once ruled over other peoples such as the Franks, Lombards, Burgundians and Goths. The runic texts surveyed in this book are often previously misunderstood keys to comprehending the religious, cultural and social world of the early Germanic peoples prior to and during their conversions to Christianity, and the cultural and intellectual Latinising that followed the adoption of both the writing system and the official religion of the late Roman Empire.

The study and interpretation of old Germanic inscriptions, though, can be a strange business. In fact it has been suggested that the first law of runic studies is that ‘for every inscription there shall be as many interpretations as there are runologists studying it’. This may seem a bit too clever or even a little bewildering. But a lot of what passes for expert runic interpretation has too readily strayed into the fantastic in the past, and never more so than in considerations of the runic legends that appear on amulets and other similar items.