Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/79

 was almost entirely confined to short monumental inscriptions recording the death of an individual, the name of the person who erected the stone to his memory, and also the name of the person who cut the letters—a proof that the use of the Runic characters was rare, and confined to a few. Of these Runic inscriptions, of which a thousand or more have been examined by antiquaries, few can be placed before the introduction of Christianity in the 11th century. The sign of the cross may, in the dreams of the zealous antiquary, appear the sign of Thor's hammer; but there is no evidence that the pagans used such a symbol, and the obvious interpretation of such a mark upon a tombstone is that it belongs to the age of Christianity. Torfæus, whose antiquarian zeal was tempered with a love of truth, and whose antiquarian knowledge has not been surpassed, says not only that the Runic inscriptions throw no light upon history, but are so intricate and confused, that what you may imagine you catch by the eye you cannot by the understanding; and in proof of his remark he refers to conflicting interpretations of the two greatest Runic antiquaries, Wormius and Verelius, of the meaning of Runic inscriptions, on which they both agree perfectly as to the strokes or incisions in the stone. Bartholinus also says, in his Danish Antiquities, that, excepting four or five, none of these Runic inscriptions are in any way illustrative of history, and in general are so obscure that the names of the persons for whom the stones are erected can scarcely be extracted, and much is matter of mere conjecture. The opinions of these great antiquaries are singularly confirmed by the recent discovery made by chemical science, that one of the few Runic inscriptions supposed to be illustrative of history,—one upon a rock