The Early Jutish Bracteate Texts From Skonager And Darum

Abstract

Several of the bracteates recovered in the nineteenth century from hoards discovered at Skonager and Darum in Jutland feature runic inscriptions that appear to record West Germanic linguistic developments. Most of the inscriptions from Iron Age Denmark seem to record language that is directly ancestral to Danish, but two of the bracteates from Skonager and Darum feature inscriptions that have long been thought to attest West Germanic names. A third inscription represented in both hoards may also preserve similar evidence for a West Germanic language spoken in Jutland during the migration period. The inscriptions from Skonager and Darum seem best understood as recording an early Jutish dialect that was distinct from the language spoken further east on Zealand and that was related to the Kentish dialect of Old English.