Cen is a rare word in Old English. It’s a torch here in the Rune Poem, and Cynewulf uses it to mean torch in his games with runes. Cynewulf: an Old English poet and fascinating person who made acrostics out of runes when signing his name to stuff, and about whom we know pretty much nothing. We know he was one of a limited few who ever signed anything. Perhaps he was a monk: it is thought most writers of Old English lived in monasteries, where the individual is not the main focus. They have a whole other focus. But you can slip your signature in there if you make something amusing out of it. Cynewulf was pretty cunning like that when it came to self promotion.
Perhaps we can look at Cynewulf’s name to learn a bit more about him. Sometimes the cen rune shape is written in manuscripts as shorthand for the … More
