Runor, magi, ideologi : en idéhistorisk studie

Sammanfattning: The present dissertation deals with runology from the perspective of the history of science and ideas. Its point of departure is the controversial question among runologists of whether or not runes were used for magical purposes and places this question in atradition of magic writing, with its roots in early antiquity (when written language emerges in Mesopotamia), and in thoughts about symbolism, whose origins are lost to usin the mists of our prehistoric past.Sweden's — and Scandinavia's — first true runologist, Johannes Bureus, considered runes not as an ancient form of writing but rather as a guide to metaphysical truths, a cabbal uppsalica. However, rune magic and the symbolic interpretation of runes also hasan historic currency of the less-savoury sort: as an element in an enthusiasm for allthings Germanic, displaying powerful racist tendencies, which burgeoned around theturn ofthe last century and which reached its zenith during the Nazi era in Germany.Concurrently, an interest in the magical properties of runes blossomed among runologists in Scandinavia. Some of them went so far as to claim that the Germanic peoples, under the influence of their contact with the literacy systems of Mediterranean cultures, had also adapted the magical-writing practice which we know from the numerous inscriptions and lead tablets found buried throughout the Roman empire. The foundations of this so-called "gematria" consists of the fact that the letters are used as numbers and therefore have a numerical value. In this manner, each word resulted in a sum, and it appears that practitioners considered that names or terms with the same numerical value also corresponded to one another in a mystical manner. In the case of runes, the numbers 16 and 24 were considered significant, since they corresponded to the two rune alphabets, the elder and the newer futhark. One of these runologists was Sigurd Agrell, professor of Slavic languages in Lund, according to whom rune gematria had its origins in Mithraism, which was proven by the similarities between the Mithraic calender and the secret sequence of rune lines (the uthark), as well as in the very names of the runes themselves.After the Second World War these rune-magic theories were subjected to harsh criticism, at least in part as a result of the symbolic excesses of lay runologists in Nazi Germany. The demand for linguistically-grounded research with neo-Positivistic overtones was now confronted with a runology based on an increasingly hermeneutic perspective, wherein philological knowledge concerning the religious, magical and social functions of the inscriptions would now comprise the basis for their interpretation. In contrast with its mother discipline, archeology, runology has almost entirely lacked a theoretical and methodical discussion. Lately however, an increasing interest in theory can be discerned, the result of large-scale research projects, computerization and a transition to more comprehensive studies.