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Worm sought linguistic help from his Icelandic correspondents and
students in Copenhagen. It was a common, though inaccurate, belief in
this period that the language of everything from tenth-century Danish
runestones to fourteenth-century sagas was essentially identical with the
Icelandic currently spoken.19 this assumption, though inaccurate, is un-
derstandable in light of the fact that there were no dictionaries, grammars,
or other aids for interpretation of not just Old Norse-Icelandic but of
medieval vernacular languages generally.20
the Icelander Arngrímur Jónsson was among Worm’s correspondents
and friends. Arngrímur first wrote to Worm in 1626 at the prompting
of Þorlákur Skúlason (1597–1656), who was the first Icelandic student
under Worm’s supervision in Copenhagen, and had recently returned to
Iceland.21 Worm had read Arngrímur’s Crymogæa (1609), a history and
defense of Iceland, and wanted to find out what else Arngrímur knew.22
Worm harbored the hope that Arngrímur could help him to interpret
Danish runestones. But he was disappointed. Arngrímur knew little about
runes and was unable to discover much more. Moreover, the Icelandic of
19 Jakob points out that the language preserved in the runic scripts that Worm was trying to
decipher was not the same language as that of the sagas or of the early modern Icelanders
(or of many Swedish runestones for that matter), although the general view at the time
maintained that they were the same or essentially the same; Ole Worm’s Correspondence,
xii, xvi–xvii, xxii. An advertisement poster produced in Stockholm in 1624 suggests how
difficult runestones were to interpret (and how much desire there was to understand them).
this poster, which is a reproduction of two images from Bureus’s book on runes, invites
readers to interpret the writing on two runestones for a reward. this appeal suggests that
there was a lack of established experts on the topic and help was being sought wherever
it might be found. there is a copy of this poster preserved pasted into the back cover of
the Beinecke Library's 1636 edition of ole Worm’s Runir: Seu, Danica literatura antiqviss-
ima, vulgò gothica dicta luci reddita, opera Olai Wormii... Cui accessit De priscâ danorum poesi
dissertatio (Copenhagen, 1636). the existence of this leaf in the Beinecke copy has not
been noted previously; Johannes Bureus, Monumenta helsingica à Throne in Angedal ante
aliquot cent. annorum posita (stockholm, 1624). On this rare broadsheet, preserved only in
two other copies, both in Sweden, see, Elisabeth Svärdström, Johannes Bureus’ Arbeten om
svenska runinskrifter (Stockholm: Wahlstrom and Widstrand, 1936), 14.
20 John Considine, Dictionaries in Early Modern Europe: Lexicography and the Making of
Heritage (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 2008); Ethel Seaton, Literary Relations
of England and Scandinavia in the Seventeenth Century (oxford: the Clarendon Press, 1935),
210–11.
21 He soon after was elected bishop of Hólar; Arngrimi Jonae Opera Latine Conscripta,
4:21–23.
22 Ole Worm’s Correspondence, xvi.
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