Before Beowulf: on the proto-history of old Germanic verse

Abstract

It has long been held that the alliterating long line common to the earliest traditions of medieval Germanic literature is of ancient pedigree. Essential similarities in Old English, Old Norse and early German poetry are typically held up as evidence for a common Germanic use of an alliterating 4/4 metrical line in the earliest vernacular poetry of England, Scandinavia and Germany. The evidence of early Germanic verse afforded by runic inscriptions from late antiquity and the early medieval period, however, suggest a rather different picture - few examples of runic verse are reconcilable with long and widely held assumptions concerning the early medieval alliterating Germanic long lines. This paper summarises the metrical and stylistic evidence from these eary epigraphic testimonies and suggests a more nuanced and linguistically plausible scheme for the history of native English, continental and Scandinavian verse in the late proto-historical period.

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