Runes and Words: Runic Lexicography in Context

The paper begins by noting the lack of a comprehensive dictionary of Scandi­navian runic inscriptions, as well as the absence of the runic evidence from most dictionaries of the early Scandinavian languages, and considers possible reasons for this. Runic inscriptions may need a different kind of dictionary, because they require a different kind of reading that takes extra-linguistic as well as linguistic contexts into account (a process that has been called “inter­disciplinary semantics”). Using the examples of the words bóndi and þegn in Viking Age inscriptions, the paper shows how the variety of available contexts enables a richer definition of these and other words, which might facilitate a different type of dictionary, based on discursive definitions.