The Noleby inscription and Germanic *rehaną

Abstract

One of the most difficult of the early runic inscriptions is that which appears on the Noleby stone. First published in the late nineteenth century, the early Swedish text has been subjected to a wide range of interpretations and accounts. The opening line of the Noleby inscription seems clear enough, featuring a collocation reflected later in Old Norse, but the meaning of most of the rest of its text has long remained obscure. The runestone’s early Swedish seems to include two reflections of a Proto-Germanic verb *rehaną, but even the proper interpretation of this form has proved controversial. A broader assessment of the comparative evidence, however, sheds new light on the morphology and semantics of this otherwise lost Old Germanic strong verb.