Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana. Supplementum - 01.06.1958, Page 300

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SECTION FIYE. PHOTOGRAPHS OF RUNES AND “DANMARKS RUNEINDSRIFTER”.
ATLAS, p. 251-264.
Chapter 19. Photographs of runes and some details of more recent methods, p. 252-261. Just as
Arendt’s individualistic drawing of runes indicated the first step forward in the development of
the copying of runes, so does modern “rune-drawing”, the “retouched photograph” (cf. p. 288),
mark the next, a step nearer to objectivity, since a subjective link, namely the subjective transfer
of runes and stones to paper, is omitted. It is replaced by the objective transfer of the photographic
plate, and when the runes are painted on the stone itself, this too guarantees—although in itself
a subjective process—a greater objectivity. In addition it may be stated that the retouching of
runes in artificial light gives “the retouched photograph” an accuracy which has up to now been
beyond expectations. The introduction of photography in the study of runes is discussed (Swe-
den’s runic works, Erik Brate and v. Friesen are mentioned). Tlie oldest Danish photograph of
runes was a daguerreotype from 1850, which has disappeared. Wimmer’s attitude to the photo-
graphing of runestones (cf. above) is touched on, his pedagogic standpoint rejected. Based mainly
on a paper by the author in Fornvánnen in 1932, mention is made of the author’s earliest ex-
periment with casts and photography, and progress is followed up to daylight-magnesium-flash
photography, which up to the present has given the best results. The importance of the floodlight
or the pocket-torch for the study of runes (and the study of rock carvings) is mentioned, and
the author warns against tackling the reading of runes in the “available light”, as this has been
the cause of faulty readings by earlier investigators. Examples are given of new readings with
the help of the floodlight, and there is a report of an emergency method if no artificial light is
available. Casts of runes are commented on; the reason why they played such an extraordinarily
important part with earlier investigators, especially Wimmer,—and really had to play the most
important part—,was that the cast was for them, as it were, the substitute for artificial light,
since in their study the cast could be placed so that the runes caught the best light. To obtain
the best results from a cast, a photograph of the runestone must be studied at the same time.
Older scholars could not in the nature of things do this, and therefore the cast did not always
give the results it ought to have done. For the present-day study of runes, since the introduction
of photography, the main importance of a cast is that a photograph of the cast (the back of it)
is often more revealing than a direct photograph in detail of the stone itself. It is emphasised
that a number of Wimmer’s trips to the monuments for revision of his readings, when with the
help of a cast he had approached a (new) reading of a weathered passage, were doomed to failure,
because he was dependent on the “available light”. On the other hand the author joins with Lis
Jacobsen in complaining that Wimmer strongly insists on the accuracy of his readings at all
times (even of the faulty ones). On the other hand Wimmer’s contribution, his ability as a reader
and interpreter of runes is emphasised. Wimmer’s work on runes, compared with everything else
that had been published, drawn and written about runes formerly, meant such a great step for-
ward, that the mistakes due to human frailty here seem small in comparison with the results as
a whole. While Worm and Thorsen were superseded by the development of philology, the reason