Sociocultural Theory and the leub Inscriptions
Bernard Mees
Runology can be a strange business. Recent years have seen the corpus of runic texts expand in manner unparalleled any other branch Old Germanic studies. Yet this growth evidential terms seems almost perverse—it stands quite reverse to impact that discipline has had on areas antiquarian and medievalistic enquiry. It is hard point field (or subdiscipline) where findings runologists much theoretical or methodological (let alone empirical) influence. remains rather queer subsection studies, more backwater than anything else. Indeed, German runology appears especially suffer from an atheoretical malaise, one which comparable noted by critics archaeology.1 The Faustian bargain 1930s, however, did not lead reassessment recasting methods underpinned their postwar years.2 If anything, seemed substantially unreformed Germany. otherwise explain works Karl Schneider,3 man taken Ray Page as paragon what he dismisses “imaginative” runology.4 Heinz Klingenberg5 was similarly excoriated Elmer Antonsen’s (magical) straw his Runes Linguistics6—and similar criticisms might levelled at scholars Germanophile bent. “skeptical” reaction against romantic 1960s 1970s represented Klingenberg Schneider hardly advance renewed focus empiricism: it if Leopold von Ranke become key theorist
Journal of English and Germanic Philology