RUNES often feature in magical contexts in Old Norse literature (and to a lesser extent in Old English sources), so it is little wonder that they have often been taken to be essentially magical by those not familiar with the thousands of examples of mundane runic inscriptions. Many instances of runes which are described in literary texts have been referred to already in previous chapters, of course, where they seemed directly relevant to the amuletic and religious inscriptions that have survived. There are passages in old Germanic literature where the appearance of runes is not clearly reflected in actual inscriptions, however, and there has long been a suspicion that most such instances are due to embellishments typical of storytelling. The usually Christian poets and scribes who wrote down these poems and tales might therefore be thought not to have described actual examples of runic practice or genuine beliefs associated with the knowledge of runic writing.

The longest literary texts concerning the old Germanic letters are the runic poems and other similar tracts on the shapes, sounds and names of the runes. We have English, Norse and even a Gothic example of tracts on the rune-names. But these appear to be mostly expressions of the monkish fascination with antiquities or aspects of the lore of learning how to write – it is often suggested that the runic poems are based on a mnemonic similar to a modern-day alphabet jingle, rather than being inventive or descriptive literary creations.