ABSTRACT
Discussion of runic inscriptions in the context of a seminar on Scotland's early medieval stone sculpture entitled Able Minds and Practised Hands throws up several questions. What does the term 'runic' cover? What does one mean by Scotland? How is a fairly precisely defined corpus to be established in other respects? Is it helpful or unhelpful to exclude inscriptions that are not 'early medieval' or those that are not on stone? And, not least, can the corpus truthfully be described as the work of able minds and practised hands?
