KELTŲ KULTŪROS ĮTAKOS ATSPINDŽIAI MENO SALOS RUNAKMENIUOSE
REFLECTIONS OF CELTIC CULTURAL INFLUENCE IN MANX RUNE STONES

Summary/Abstract: Viking Age rune-stones found on the Isle of Man contain some exceptional features and in many ways diverge from the rest of the Scandinavian runic corpus. This might depend on the fact that they combine two energetic traditions, i.e. Scandinavian and Celtic. Scandinavian rune-carvers, skilled in their own tradition encountered on the Isle of Man another stone-carving tradition – i.e. Ogam stones. Presence of the Ogam tradition on the Isle of Man might have been one of the factors why rune-stones were so well accepted and flourished on the isle during the Viking age. In the article I use Scandinavian runic material for comparative purposes. It enables me to look at the rune-stones of the Isle of Man in the light of almost all Scandinavian Viking-age inscriptions and specify their features, identify their peculiarities and differences from the rest of the corpus. One of the most unique features is the presence of bilingual runic-Ogam inscriptions. Stones containing both traditions are found just in the Celtic area. In this article I argue that Ogam inscriptions on bilingual stones were carved at the same time as runic inscriptions and not earlier. Another feature which is quite unique to Manx rune-stones is their design, or rather lay-out. More than half of the inscriptions tend to appear on the narrow side of the stone. I think that it is again due to the influence of Ogam, where inscription always runs along the edge of the stone across the imaginative stem-line. Formula of the Manx rune-stones is also unique, i.e. contains the word crus “cross” instead of the word steinn “stone” in Scandinavian tradition. My research has shown that in Scandinavian inscriptions the word “cross” is used in completely different contexts and could not be borrowed to the Isle of Man from Scandinavia. The formula of the Manx rune-stones was obviously created on the Isle of Man. Linguistic research of the Manx rune-inscriptions revealed the influence of Celtic upon Scandinavian language. First of all, rune-inscriptions contain a lot of Celtic personal names. Besides, there are many cases of inflectional confusion that is likely to arise in a bilingual society.

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