ABSTRACT
As a body of work, the mythological and heroic poems of the Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda undoubtedly constitute the superlative source of literary engagement with runes, dealing with everything from the mythical origins of the script to the skills deemed necessary for the rune carver. However, the distinction between the mythological poems and the so-called heroic lays — a distinction recognised is one of degrees rather than absolutes, the traditional labels suggesting a division that is 'unwarrantably sharp'. The heroic landscape is, after all, a human landscape, however exaggerated, and the runic topoi at work in these poems may also be premised on a semblance of runic practice in the existential world. The fact is that the introduction of the naturalistic scene of reading and writing to the legendary heroic narrative makes sense in the context of the North Atlantic littoral in a way that it does not in the landscape of the Migration Period.
