Árbók Hins íslenzka fornleifafélags - 2015, Qupperneq 62

61RÚNARISTURNAR Á MARMARALJÓNINU FRÁ PÍREUS, NÚ Í FENEYJUM
NGL: Norges Gamle Love intill 1387, I. Christiania 1846.
NIyR: Norges Innskrifter med de yngre Runer, V. bindi. Oslo 1964.
Peterson, Lena. 2007. Nordiskt Runnamnsleksikun. Uppsala.
Rafn, C. Ch. 1856. Antiquités de L’Orient (Oldtidsminder fra Östen).
Kaupmannahöfn.
Sigfús Blöndal. 1954. Væringjasaga. Reykjavík.
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Wessén. Femte serien. 1979. Stockholm.
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Stockholm.
Summary
The runic inscriptions on the marble lion from Piraeus, now in Venice
The rune inscribed lion of Piraeus has been standing outside the Arsenale in
Venice since 1692. It was taken there in the year 1688 as a war-trophy, together
with three other marble lions from Athens or its vicinity, by Francesco Morosini,
Captain-General of the Venetian forces, after he captured Athens and the
Peloponnese from the Turks in September 1687. The lion is a classical sculpture
from the 4th century B.C., and had probably been a feature of the harbour of
Piraeus for almost twenty centuries when it made its move to Venice. The lion
stood in its new setting for over 100 years before the runes were discovered by the
Swedish diplomat and linguist Johan David Åkerblad in 1797 or 1798. In 1800 he
wrote a report about his discovery without trying to interpret the worn out runes.
Soon runologists started to visit the lion to read the runes with varying degrees of
success. The first philologist to make a complete reading and interpretation of the
inscriptions was the Dane, Carl Christian Rafn, who investigated the inscriptions
in 1852. In 1913 the Swedish runologist, Erik Brate, interpreted the inscriptions
and published his results in 1919.
In 2010 I had the opportunity to visit Venice to investigate the inscriptions. It
was necessary to revisit the site three more times in order to completely investigate
and document the three inscriptions. They all date to the 11th century and
are presumably made by Varangians in the emperial forces of Byzantium. The