Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana. Supplementum - 01.06.1958, Síða 294

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some cases definite words, and he found these words although they were not there. His main
source of error, however, as for later draughtsmen and runologists—including Wimmer—was
that he had to copy the inscriptions in the light in which he chanced to find the monument.
Finally it must be remembered that the sketches extant are finished copies, and numerous ex-
amples can be quoted of errors made at the desk, either as pure slips or else because he con-
sciously adjusts his rough sketch, believing that he has made a mistake when originally copying
the inscription. To this may be added the fact that his (i.e. his period’s) standards of accuracy
in copying inscriptions were not the same as ours. For Skonvig an n-rune was an n-rune, and an
a-rune an a-rune, without any consideration of special forms (which however in some caseshe
attempts to reproduce). His drawings therefore employ normalised runic forms. It is a fact that
every abnormal rune and linguistic form in Skonvig must be regarded with suspicion unless the
reading and reproduction can be corroborated by some other means, and even if his drawings
contain good, current word-forms, there is nevertheless no guarantee that the inscription may
not contain something else in spite of this fact. However reliable Skonvig may be when he is
dealing with a clear inscription, he is just as uncertain as soon as the inscription offers difficulties
in the shape of flaking, wear or weathering. The high standard of his results is proved by the fact
that of the 59 runic inscriptions he copied, 21, possibly 22 are fully intelligible according to his
material, 15 have only one enigmatic faulty reading (as a rule a name mistakenly read), 4 stones
have two confusing faulty readings, 8 can be interpreted partly, while 9 inscriptions are either
completely illegible or are copied in such a way that only single or scattered words can be deduced.
Of these 9 stones 6 are still extant, and 5 of these are in such a condition that Wimmer himself
could not decipher them. Some of these rnust to this very day be considered as partly illegible.
All this is an exceedingly fine achievement, considering that in Skonvig we have the first real
pioneer of runological work in the field.
SECTION THREE. REPRODUCTIONS OF SKONVIG’S DRAWINGS IN MONUMENTA
DANICA, p. 153-174.
Chapter 7. Techrxique, p. 154-165. Up to the present it has been the generally held belief that
Worm’s Monumenta was illustrated with wood cuts, and a glance at the various illustrations
shows the justification for this view. From Worm’s correspondence with Stephan Stephanius,
the publisher of Saxo Grammaticus, however, the surprising information appears that the ma-
jority of the illustrations are not wood cuts but metal cuts. In a letter of 1641 Worm reports that
his rune illustrations are icones in stanno, pictures in pewter, and says at the same time that the
cost of such a “pewter cut” is only half that of a wood cut. It appears from the Monumenta
illustrations themselves that by icones in stanno is meant relief engraving on pewter and not
etching, or intaglio engraving. The older techniques for illustration and Magnus Petersen’s chemi-
type method (relief etching) is touched upon, and it is emphasised that certainly the use of
metal cuts has been known to research before, but—apart from the brass cuts from the 1400’s
so important for the history of art—metal cuts have been regarded as a completely inferior
phenomenon in the technique of book illustration. It is now shown that Worm’s Monumenta con-