ABSTRACT
In both poems the runes occur in their right order, heralded as it were by the unmistakable rune-name cen, and woven singly into the structure of the verse so as to further the narrative rather than in any way impede it. On stylistic evidence there is good ground for believing that Juliana is the earliest of Cynewulf’s signed poems: “The narrative fluctuates and the style affords few marks of the rhetorical and metrical skills which the Elene and Christ II display”. Although the gradual mixing of Roman letters with runes began probably already around A.D. 700, there can be little doubt that the 9th century was still thoroughly familiar with runic writing. Furthermore, the Runic Poem suggests that more than the purely graphic aspect of runes had survived into the 9th century: to some of the rune-names there still cling in the poem older associations which can be traced back to pagan Germanic antiquity.
