Ruthwell Cross - Runic Inscription

Runic Inscription

At each side of the vine-tracery runic inscriptions are carved. The runes were first described around 1600, and Reginald Bainbrigg of Appleby recorded the inscription for the Britannia of William Camden. Around 1832, the runes were recognized as different from the Scandinavian futhark (categorized as Anglo-Saxon runes) by Thorleif Repp, by reference to the Exeter Book. His rendition referred to a place called the vale of Ashlafr, compensation for injury, a font and a monastery of Therfuse.

John Mitchell Kemble in 1840 advanced a reading referring to Mary Magdalene. The better known Dream of the Rood inscription is due to a revised reading of Kemble's in an 1842 article. The inscription is translated as:

ᛣᚱᛁᛋᛏ ᚹᚫᛋ ᚩᚾ ᚱᚩᛞᛁ ᚻᚹᛖᚦᚱᚨ / ᚦᛖᚱ ᚠᚢᛋᚨ ᚠᛠᚱᚱᚪᚾ ᛣᚹᚩᛗᚢ / ᚨᚦᚦᛁᛚᚨ ᛏᛁᛚ ᚪᚾᚢᛗ

Krist wæs on rodi. Hweþræ'/ þer fusæ fearran kwomu / æþþilæ til anum.

"Christ was on the cross. Yet / the brave came there from afar / to their lord."

Kemble's revised reading is based on the poem of the Vercelli Book, to the extent that missing words in each are supplied from the other. Its authenticity is disputed and may be a conjecture inserted by Kemble himself: O'Neill (2005) notes Kemble's "almost pathological dislike of Scandinavian interference in what he sees as the English domain." Kemble himself notes how the inscription may be "corrected" with the help of the Vercelli Book.

Many believe that the runes, as opposed to the Latin inscriptions, were added later, possibly as late as the 10th century. Conner agrees with Paul Meyvaert’s conclusion that the runic poem dates from after the period in which the monument was created. He says Meyvaert has “satisfactorily explained” that the layout of the runes suggest “that the stone was already standing when the decision to add the runic poem was made.” The runic inscription on the monument is not a “formulaic” memorial text of the kind usually carved in Old English on stone. Rather, Conner sees the content of the runic addition to the monument as related to prayers used in the adoration of the cross first composed in the tenth century. He therefore concludes that the poem was developed in the 10th century – well after the creation of the monument.