The Inscription of the Whetstone from Strøm

Abstract

The runic inscription on the Whetstone from Strøm in Norway is of particular interest because it represents the earliest attestation of a work-song in the Germanic languages. Archeologists cannot aid in the dating of this inscription, since no other objects were found with the whetstone. Previous attempts to fix a date on the basis of runic and linguistic evidence have relied on ad hoc assumptions concerning phonological developments and the relative age of certain runic variants. It is shown that the inscription can be interpreted without such ad hoc hypotheses and the work-song must date from approximately 450-500 A.D. at the latest, rather than from the beginning of the seventh century as previously assumed.