Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics (NorS)

Call for papers: Tenth International Symposium on Runes and Runic Inscriptions (ISRRI 10): Past, Present and Beyond

Conference.

Runological research is a complex discipline with long and proud traditions, yet it is also a field that continues to evolve, driven by new methodological approaches, advances in digital analysis, and an increasing awareness of the linguistic, material and social contexts in which runic writing emerged and continues to be reinterpreted. The Tenth International Symposium on Runes and Runic Inscriptions: Past, Present and Beyond, seeks to bring together scholars of runology to foster dialogue across adjacent disciplines and to explore future trajectories of runic research.

Preliminary programme

Download the list of abstracts.

Monday 17 August

Time	Event
10:00-12:30	Arrival and registration at Søndre Campus, Copenhagen University
12:30-12:55	Light Lunch (sandwich)
13:00-13:30	Plenary session Words of welcome by the Head of Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, Anne Jensen Words of welcome by the organisers
13:30-15:30	The centenary The Centenary of Danmarks Runeindskrifter: Celebrating Lis Jacobsen and her Work Lis Jacobsen
15:30-16:10	Coffee break
	End of Monday’s program
17:30-19:00	Evening excursion by foot in the city center: Runes in the Round Tower (Købmagergade 52A, 1150 København K). Rasmus Agertoft will give us a guided tour in the tower
19:00-	Dinner at own cost

Tuesday 18 August

Time	Event
	Plenary Session: Runes in Context 1
9:00-10:30	Invited speaker: XX Tineke Loijenga, Guus Kroonen: A new runic inscription from the Netherlands
10:30-10:55	Coffee break
11:00-12:00	Michael Schulte: Die Sprache der älteren Runeninschriften im Überlieferungskontext: Urnordisch, Nordwestgermanisch oder noch etwas anderes? Magnus Källström: Det runristade blyblecket från Binge i Alva på Gotland – En ny ledtråd till övergången mellan den äldre och yngre runraden
12:00-12:50	Lunch
13:00-15:00	Gaby Waxenberger: The Old English runic inscriptions found in the dialect area of Mercia Judith Jesch: Hybridity in epigraphic inscriptions from England Ema T. Rimstad: Multiscriptality and Multilingualism during the Middle Ages on the British Isles S. Beth Newman Ooi: The distribution of runic and roman script across potentially apotropaic inscriptions on objects from early medieval England
15:00-15:25	Coffee break
15:30-17:00	Johan Bollaert: Inscribed Tombstones in Medieval Sweden and their Layout Sophie Heier: Simris 1 (Sk 46) revisited: Graphematic Evidence in the Debate over Torgöt Fotsarve’s Attribution James E. Knirk: Special Greenlandic runic forms and their appearance elsewhere: Dotted u and Greenlandic b
	End of Tuesday’s program
	Evening: Dinner at own cost

Wednesday 19 August

All day excursion by bus to Skåne/Lund.

Thursday 20 August

Time	Event
	Plenary Session: Methods and Methodology
9:00-10:30	Frederikke Reimer: Tør vi stole på de skriftlige kilder? Historiske beretninger samt tidligantikvariske indberetninger af runeindskrifter og deres ægthed Lilla Kopar: The frustrating font of Bingley: The story of a ‘retired’ runic object. Henrik Williams: The importance of Runology in Runic Studies
10:30-10:55	Coffee break
11:00-12:00	Kristel Zilmer: More than one face: Working with different sides of runic script-bearers Christiane Zimmermann: Classification of formal variation: Challenges of a comprehensive description of runic graph types and variants
12:00-12:50	Lunch
	Parallel Session A: Runes in Context 2
13:00-15:00	Simon Nygaard: Danish Viking-Age runestones as sources for the ritualisation and embodiment of runestone carving Per Holmberg & Sonia Pereswetoff-Morath: The Rök and Sparlösa inscriptions in mythological, multimodal and landscape context (Language: Swedish) Per Holmberg & Sonia Pereswetoff-Morath: Landscape as semiotic resourse for runestone meaning making: The case of Västergötland Alessandro Palumbo & Anna Blennow: Skånes epigrafiska områden
	Parallel Session B: Runes and Power
13:00-14:30	Torun Zachrisson: A high-ranking lady, royal household and landed property as a background for a renewed discussion of the Hedeby runestones, DR2 and DR4 Jaron Rochon & Ragnhild Ljosland: The Roles of Women in Trade During the Scandinavian Middle Ages. Insights from Small Inscribed Objects Bailey Watson & Ragnhild Ljosland: Between Tradition and Individualism: Self-Commemoration in the Swedish Runestone Corpus
14:30-15:25	Coffee break & Poster Session
	Parallel Session C: Runes and Power
15:30:16:30	Nancy L. Wicker: Material evidence of social status conveyed by runic inscriptions on Scandinavian gold bracteates [Bracteates with runes = higher status, than others] Sebastian Zimmermann: The Illerup-Vimose-Øvre Stabu connexion, a case of weapons mass-production in runic epigraphy?
15:30-16:30	Parallel Session D: Runes in Context
	End of Thursday’s program
	Evening: Dinner at own cost

Friday 21 August

Time	Event
	Plenary Session: Modern & Post Reformatorial Runes
9:00-10:30	Kerstin Majewski & Verena Höfig: Modern Runes in Context: Methodology, Reception and Cultural Reuse Angie Padilla: Runes in Contemporary Heathenry: Identity, Authenticity, and Cultural Heritage in the Digital Age
10:30-10:55	Coffee break
11:00-12:00	Karen Langsholt Holmqvist: Dissemination of runes at school Alessia Bauer: The interaction between Runica manuscripta and epigraphy [from e to rm or reverse?]
12:00-12:55	Lunch
13:00-14:00	K. Jonas Nordby: Creating Runes in a Roman Script Environment Stefan Jacobsson: Bindrunes in inscriptions with Dalecarlian runes
	Digital tools
14:00-15:00	Guus Kronen & Marie Hugny: Towards a linguistically annotated Runic corpus Wout Sinnaeve & Michelle Waldispühl: Analyzing spelling variation in runic personal names and common appellatives using NLP methods
15:00-15:25	Coffee break
15:30-17:00	Jenny Wallensten, Richard Potter, Robin Rönnlund& Laila Kitzler Åhfeldt: The Digital Piraeus Lion Project Paola Peratello: Reading the Piraeus Lion: a prototype of a 3D digital edition of its runic inscriptions
	Closing session End of Friday’s program
19:00-	Conference Dinner at Restaurant Tårnet (The Tower), Christiansborg Castle

Call for papers

First call for papers - closed

Two special sub-themes are outlined as individual plenary sessions:

The Centenary of Danmarks Runeindskrifter: Celebrating Lis Jacobsen and her Work
Epigraphy in the Medieval North Atlantic

The following general thematic strands have been preliminarily outlined:

Runes in Context (1: materiality, physical landscapes. 2: linguistic landscape, variation, orthography, dialects, multilingualism, multiscriptuality) (not restricted to any certain time periods)
Runes and Power (manifestations of power, social strata) (not restricted to any certain time periods)
Runes and Renaissance (post-medieval use of runes, manuscript runes, national romanticism)
Digital Runology (digital platforms for epigraphic research, AI in runic studies, 3D and other imaging technologies)

We encourage submissions of papers and posters, to be aligned with a sub-theme/and or thematic strand, as well as project reports. Proposals that address theoretical and methodological aspects or new approaches or techniques are particularly welcome. The preliminary program provides room for approximately 40 papers in addition to keynote lectures, poster presentations and project reports. The program will be organised based on submitted proposals.

Details

Scholars interested in presenting a paper or poster/project at the symposium should submit their proposals to ISRRI10_2026@ku.dk by 15 September, 2025. Proposals should include:

Presenter’s name
Affiliation (if applicable)
Contact information
Type of presentation (poster/project or paper)
Working title
Abstract in English (max 300 words)

Submission guidelines and presentation format

Please submit your contributions as standard text documents (e.g., Microsoft Word, Pages, or OpenOffice) using Unicode-compatible characters. We recommend using fonts that support runic characters, phonetic symbols, and relevant diacritics. For runes and transliterations, suitable fonts include Runlitt A and Futhark A by Svante Lagman, as well as the Bergen fonts Gullskoen and Gullhornet.

Each presentation will be allocated 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for questions and discussion.

Presentations in Danish, English, German, Norwegian, and Swedish are accepted. If you intend to present in a language other than the one used in your abstract, please indicate this clearly upon submission.

Second call for papers

As previously stated, the symposium will open with the plenary session The Centenary of Danmarks Runeindskrifter: Celebrating Lis Jacobsen and Her Work. An important adjustment is that a plenary session focusing on methods and methodologies will replace the originally planned session on epigraphy in the Medieval North Atlantic.

The thematic strands have been slightly adjusted to reflect the contents of the submitted paper proposals, as communicated in the first circular, but they remain broadly as originally outlined, although some papers naturally overlap in content:

Runes in Context 1 (main focus: lingustics)
Runes in Context 2 (main focus: materiality/landscape/mythology)
Runes and Power (social status/women)
Modern runes & Runes and Renaissance
Digital Runology (digital tools)

There is room for a few additional papers and several more posters. All thematic strands are still open for paper proposals. New proposals must align with the thematic strands. Scholars interested in presenting a paper or poster/project at the symposium should submit their proposals to ISRRI10_2026@ku.dk no later than 1 March, 2026.

Registration without submitting an abstract or a poster is also possible. Please write to: ISRRI10_2026@ku.dk no later than 1 March, 2026.

Proposals should include

Presenter’s name
Affiliation (if applicable)
Contact information
Type of presentation (poster/project or paper)
Working title
Abstract in English (max 300 words)

Submission guidelines and presentation format

Each presentation will be allocated 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for questions, discussion, and speaker transition.

Please note: The deadline for the revision and adjustment of already submitted and accepted papers and posters is 1 May, 2026. Adjustments should also be submitted to ISRRI10_2026@ku.dk.

Registration fee and accommodation

We aim to keep the symposium registration fee as low as possible with reduced rates available for students and doctoral candidates. Efforts are currently underway to secure funding that may help subsidise participant expenses. However, attendees should be prepared to cover their own travel, accommodation, and meals.

The estimated total fee is 1500 DKK / 200 EUR. The final symposium fee is expected to be set around 1 June, 2026. A payment method will be established by the university. Please be advised that payment will only be possible by credit card.

Practical information

Welcome to Copenhagen

Copenhagen is a wonderful city with a relaxed atmosphere, and it is easy to get around on foot, by bicycle, or by public transportation. In August, there is a good chance of warm summer days, but be prepared for wind and rain as well!

Many of the city’s main transport hubs and tourist attractions are located within the city centre (Indre By) — for example, the Little Mermaid, the Round Tower, and the National Museum — all within reasonable walking or cycling distance. Hotels in all price categories can also be found here.

The University’s South Campus is located just outside the city centre on the island of Amager (pronounced [ˈama̰ː]). From the main train station, it is approximately a 30‑minute walk. Fortunately, Copenhagen offers an efficient and easy-to-use public transportation system. The Metro is especially recommended.

For general visitor information, we suggest Visit Copenhagen.

Maps

Google Maps is always an option, but several other digital map providers exist for example, the commercial Danish provider www.krak.dk or the state map service Kortoverblik, which is ideal if you enjoy comparing present-day maps with historical ones.

Public transportation

Metro: To travel from the city centre to South Campus, take the M1 line (Vanløse–Vestamager) towards Vestamager. The closest stop to the campus is Islands Brygge Station (not DR Byen/Universitetet!). M1 connects with all other metro lines (M2, M3, and M4) at Kongens Nytorv.