The Ruthwell Cross Runes

The edges of the narrow faces of the Ruthwell Cross carry a runic inscription.

Images

Pictures of the Cross itself [North] [East] [South] [West]

A transliteration of the runes (those currently visible and those reconstructed from earlier drawings).

An alphabet giving the phonetic values of the runes used on the Cross.

Context

The transliterated text of the runes [Ruthwell Cross: Runic Text].

See the books by Elliot and by Page on the Reading list for an introduction to Runes.

There is general agreement about what is represented by the runes on the Cross although there is some variation in ways of representing them in the Latin alphabet.

Note that there are separate runes for indicating sounds which are not normally distinguished by the Latin alphabet and that the Ruthwell Cross uses a "futhorc" (or runic alphabet) which is slightly different from the common Germanic futhorc or the others found in England (see the table of runes in Images [Runes (Phonetic)]).

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