Bryggen inscriptions

The Bryggen inscriptions are a find of some 670 medieval runic inscriptions on wood (mostly pine) and bone found from 1955 and forth at "Bryggen" (and its surroundings) in Bergen, Norway. It has been called the most important runic find in the twentieth century. Before the find of these inscriptions, there was doubt whether the runes were ever used for anything else than inscriptions of names and solemn phrases. The Bryggen find showed the everyday use that runes had in this area, and presumably in other parts of Scandinavia as well. Another important aspect of the find was that many of the inscriptions were obviously at least as young as the 14th century. Previously it was believed that the use of runes in Norway had died out long before. Since these findings, many more runic inscriptions of this type have been found in Norway.

The inscriptions have numbers for Bergen finds, mostly "B" followed by three figures.

Many of the inscriptions follow the formula "Eysteinn á mik", ("Eysteinn owns me," B001), and have probably been used as markers of property - like modern day name tags. Some contain short messages of different types, such as "Ást min, kyss mik" ("my darling, kiss me," B017) and others have longer messages such as business letters and orders. Yet others contain short religious inscriptions, often in Latin, such as "Rex Judæorum In nomine Patris Nazarenus" (B005) and may have been intended as amulets.

The inscriptions are currently kept at "Bryggens Museum" in Bergen. A small number of them are on display.

Examples found at Bryggen or nearby

See also

* Birch bark document

External links

* [http://www.nb.no/baser/runer/eindex.html Database with the runes from Bryggen]
* [http://www.nb.no/baser/runer/ribwww/english/runeindex.html Report on computerizing the Bryggen runes]