Läsordning i tidigvikingatida runristningar

The primary aim of this essay is to clarify the visual aspects of reading order in the early Viking Age Scandinavian runic material. The investigation in part identi­fies the visual principles of reading which occur in the inscriptions and in part uses these principles to support new reading orders in three inscrip­tions: Bo Boije4 Skee, U ANF1937;163 Björkö and DR NOR1988;5 Malt. The read­ing order which is examined is the one offered by the text itself, for which reason the intention of the carver and the behaviour of the actual reader is ignored. The theoretical framework of the study is based on social semiotics and a multimodal approach to text, i.e. meaning is expressed not only by lan­guage but also via tools such as image and layout. The analysis model of Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) of the grammar of visual design is specifically em­ployed as the point of departure. The result establishes a number of visual semiotic resources. These resources express concepts such as salience, creation of associations or demarcation, which can be connected in diverse ways to func­tions of reading order such as start of reading or the reading pathway. Some resources seem to express none of these three concepts and can therefore be assumed to be directly linked to reading order via convention. Bo Boije4, U ANF1937;163 and DR NOR1988;5 offer several visual possibilities of reading order which are considered in turn. New reading orders have been proposed for all of these cases.https://doi.org/10.33063/diva-401044