Kensington Rune Stone, much-disputed stone found (1898) on a farm near Kensington, Minn., SW of Alexandria. Inscribed on the stone in runes is an account of a party of Norse explorers, 14 days...

Bugge, Sophus, 1833–1907, Norwegian philologist. He made a notable edition of the Old Norse runes, and his was the first critical edition (1881–89; 2d series 1896) of the poems of the Eddas.

Cynewulf, fl. early 9th cent.?, Old English religious poet of Northumbria or Mercia. Four poems have been ascribed to him on the evidence of his signatures in runes in the text of each of thes...

Lönnrot, Elias, 1802–84, Finnish philologist, compiler of the Kalevala. Although he was trained as a physician, he spent his life, after 1828, traveling through Finland, Lapland, and NW Russia...

Ogham, ogam, or ogum, ancient Celtic alphabet of one of the Irish runic languages. It was used by the druids and abandoned after the first few centuries of the Christian era. The ogham runes r...

Taylor, Isaac, 1829–1901, English clergyman, antiquarian, and author, chiefly noted for researches in philology. In 1885, Taylor became canon of York. His inclination toward controversy led to...

Kalevala, Finnish national epic. It is a compilation of verses recounting extraordinary deeds of three semidivine brothers from mythical Kaleva, land of the heroes. Zakarias Topelius published...

Norse, another name for the North Germanic, or Scandinavian, group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Germanic languages). The modern Norse languages—Danis...

Alphabet [Gr. alpha-beta, like Eng. ABC], system of writing, theoretically having a one-for-one relation between character (or letter) and phoneme (see phonetics). Few alphabets have achieved ...