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1. Prelude: Reading the Runamo Rock
This essay explores the problem of intentionality in contexts of narrative inquiry, and to bring some of the key issues into focus I begin with a story concerning two nineteenth-century Nordic scholars involved in a scandal about an archeological "finding" whose interpretation turned precisely on the question of intention.1
The scandal centered on the Runamo rock in Blekinge, Sweden. The markings on this rock, at that time an object of longstanding interest among scholars of Northern antiquities, were interpreted as a runic inscription in what appeared to be a definitive study by the Icelandic runologist Finnur Magnússon, whose initial 1834 article on the subject was expanded into a 742-page tome published in 1841. An artist's sketch of markings, included in Magnússon's book, is presented in Fig. 1. Magnússon interpreted the markings as runic verses hailing King Harald as the rightful ruler of the Danish kingdom, and asking Odin and the other Norse gods for help in defeating his enemies (Rix 601). But then, in a 38-page pamphlet published in 1844 by the 23-year old Danish scholar Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae, the markings on the Runamo rock were revealed to be a network of naturally occurring cracks and fissures. In the pamphlet, Worsaae describes his frustration at not finding at the site anything resembling the sketches included in Magnússon's study, and notes that he commissioned new drawings by a different painter (Fig. 2). In addition, to bolster his case, Worsaae had plaster impressions made of parts of the rock (Fig. 3). These casts made it clear that Magnússon's interpretation could not be supported by the actual archeological evidence, with the scandal ruining the older scholar's reputation and leading to a number of satiric caricatures in the press (Rix 604).
As presented by Robert Rix in his brilliant article on "Runes, Rocks and Romanticism," the scandal emerged from a clash between (and helped underscore the incompatibility of) two orientations toward the past: on the one hand, the Romantic antiquarianism that looked to the archeological record for corroboration of the legendary figures and exploits detailed in written, literary traditions of "Northern" cultures (590-94); on the other hand, a new, more empirical approach in which, instead of viewing archeology as ancillary to legend,...