Saltfleetby spindle-whorl

What it is

A small lead weight pierced by a vertical hole, used in spinning, is the object called the Saltfleetby spindle-whorl. It came to light in Lincolnshire, in eastern England, and its shape and style suit Anglo-Scandinavian work of the 10th century. What makes it notable is the writing on its wall and on its flat face: runes of the Younger Fuþark, the alphabet of Viking Age Scandinavia. Readers of the text take it as a request for aid addressed to Óðinn, to Heimdallr and to a third name, Þalfa, on behalf of a woman called Úlfljót. On that reading the whorl is a charm, one of a group of late Viking Age runic amulets known from the Orkneys to Russia.

Where it comes from

Two kinds of evidence bear on its date. The shape belongs to type A1 in Penelope Walton Rogers' classification, a form placed at roughly 600 to 1000 CE and common in 10th-century layers at York. The runes pull later, since two of the signs are developments of the late 10th and the mid 11th centuries. Judith Jesch argues for a 12th-century inscription, far later than the design would suggest, and raises the possibility that the writing was added afterwards or that the archaeological dating is wrong. Eastern England is thought likelier than Scandinavia as the place of manufacture. Denise Moncaster found the object while metal detecting near Saltfleetby on 1 September 2010, and it was recorded with the Portable Antiquities Scheme.

How it is done

The text falls into two parts. One line runs around the wall of the whorl and is legible; the other, on the flat face, is harder to read. The wall line is understood to say that Óðinn, Heimdallr and Þalfa are helping Úlfljót. The verb is indicative, a plain statement rather than a wish. One suggestion is that turning the whorl while spinning was held to make that statement real. The closing runes on the face resist translation, and because the ending is cryptic, John Hines suggests it may have made sense only to the carver and to anyone the carver told.

Tools and materials

The whorl is lead, 26 by 25 by 12 mm and 49.72 g, with a hole of 7 to 8 mm through the centre. From above it looks less like a circle than a rounded triangle, a shape that may have made it easier to turn with a finger on the spindle. A walled middle sits between a flat side and a conical one; the flat side probably faced upward in use. The runes are mostly long-branch Younger Fuþark, mingling older and later shapes, two of them drawn from the 24-letter expanded fuþark that took hold in the Christian Middle Ages. A small cross is cut into the wall, partly overlapped by an r.

What it is for

The inscription asks for help, and it asks gods for that help. The runes name Úlfljót, a woman's name, as the person to be aided; its masculine form belongs to Úlfljótr, the first law-speaker of Iceland's Alþingi. That the whorl worked as a charm is inferred from the request rather than stated anywhere on it. Hines and others set it within a wider tradition of late Viking Age runic amulets, small personal objects bearing divine names, known from the Orkneys to Russia. Óðinn's close link with spells is widely noted, along with the view that naming him strengthens a charm.

Who does it

Spinning belonged to the household, and in this period it was largely women's work, so the owner of the whorl was probably a woman as well. Whether the carver was a Norse speaker living in Lincolnshire or one passing through cannot be settled from the small number of comparable pieces. The whorl's shape is local to the region, which points to a local hand. A soapstone example from Aust-Agder, Norway, names Gunnhildr as its maker; a whorl from East Yorkshire bears marks that look runic but cannot be read. Lincolnshire and Norway had contacts in the 12th century, among them a writ of Henry II on tolls for Norwegian merchants at Grimsby.

What people believe

Behind the object stands the religion usually called Old Nordic, a world of gods such as Óðinn and Heimdallr, approached through carved and spoken words. The find complicates any simple account of conversion. Its rune shapes and language are later than the Christianisation of England, yet gods are named on it. Scholars note that calling on such gods and keeping Christian customs need not exclude one another. Jesch adds that the carver's own faith cannot be read off the text, since heathen names appear in Norwegian inscriptions long after conversion: one from Bryggen asks Óðinn to reveal a thief's name 'for Christianity' and closes with 'Amen', and another, from the late 12th century, calls on Þórr and Óðinn together.

How scholars and sceptics see it

John Hines treats the writing as Danish in character, judging by the broadly long-branch rune shapes, and reads the first two names as Óðinn and Heimdallr. Judith Jesch is more cautious. She prefers to treat rune shapes as a continuum rather than two separate long and short sets, and points to close matches between the wording here and Norwegian finds. She observes that oþen is recorded as a spelling of Óðinn only twice, both from Bergen, in the 12th and 14th centuries, while the Viking Age Ribe skull fragment has uþin. She also raises Auðun, a common name in English records, as another possible reading.

Compare and confuse

The whorl belongs with a short list of runic objects that name gods: the Canterbury charm, the Near Fakenham plaque, the Kvinneby amulet and Sigtuna amulet I are grouped with it. Closest of all is the 8th-century Ribe skull fragment, where a word for help stands beside three names including Óðinn, much as it does here, and a Bergen inscription of the late 12th century that summons Þórr and Óðinn. The broader family of late Viking Age runic amulets is attested from the Orkneys to Russia.

Today

The whorl is held in a private collection. Its entry in the Portable Antiquities Scheme, LIN-D92A22, and its place in the Rundata catalogue as E18 keep it available to researchers, and Jesch returned to it in a 2020 article, 'Further Thoughts on E18 Saltfleetby'. Discussion since the find has centred less on the object than on what it implies: that a household tool in eastern England could carry an appeal to heathen gods generations after the conversion, and that the last words of the inscription remain unsettled.

Questions people ask about Saltfleetby spindle-whorl

Good reading and sources

• Saltfleetby spindle-whorl on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data