期刊名称：Futhark : International Journal of Runic Studies
电子版ISSN：1892-0950
出版年度：2010
期号：1
页码：7-26
出版社：University of Oslo & Uppsala University
摘要：In a recent article Karin Seim (2005) discusses the relationship between observation and interpretation in runic studies. She takes as her startingpoint a statement by the nineteenth-century runologist, George Stephens (1867, 214): “Jeg giver kun, hvad der står, ikke hvad der burde stå” (‘I only reproduce what is in the inscription, not what ought to be there’). This affirmation of the primacy of observation came in reply to critics, in particular Ludvig Wimmer, who complained, inter alia, that Stephens’s readings of runic inscriptions were often unconstrained by the grammars and lexica of the languages in which they were written (Wimmer 1867, especially 1–27). While in no way offering a defence of the would-be savant of Copenhagen, Seim stresses the danger that lurks for those blessed with greater linguistic insight than Stephens: they will tend to see what their training has led them to expect to see. But of course the ignorant are not to be deemed free of preconceptions either. Indeed, it is hard to see how anyone could set about reading an ancient text without some notion of what it might say. Nevertheless, it is must be counted one of the prime tasks of those editing epigraphic texts to distinguish as rigorously as they can between observation and interpretation. The editor has many other tasks as
