Pforzen buckle

The Pforzen buckle is a silver belt buckle found in Pforzen, Ostallgäu (Schwaben) in 1992. The Alemannic grave in which it was found (no. 239) dates to the end of the 6th century and was presumably that of a warrior, as it also contained a lance, spatha, seax and shield. The buckle itself is assumed to be of Roman-Mediterranean origin, possibly the product of a Lombard or Gepid workshop.

The buckle bears a runic inscription on its front, incised after its manufacture:

Linguistic analysis of the inscription reveals that it was composed in early Old High German and is thus considered the oldest preserved line of alliterative verse in any West Germanic languages (while the Golden horns of Gallehus inscription, roughly one century older, is considered the oldest example of a North Germanic metrical line). However, scholars have yet to reach a consensus as to its exact import.

Wagner (1995) reads the final ornament in line 1 as a bind rune consisting of (angi) and connects this directly with the beginning of line 2, producing angiltahu. He translates the inscription as "Aigil and Ailrun scolded Angiltah". However, this interpretation has been criticized (Düwel 2001) on the grounds that (1) the scribe had no apparent reason to resort to a complex bind-rune for part of the inscription and (2) a ‘scolding’ does not seem to be worthy of an inscription on an object interred with the remains of a warrior.

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