Solomon and Saturn is one of the more curious works in the corpus of Old English poetry.

A long poem in alliterative verse mixed with brief prose passages, it is cast in the form of a dialogue full of riddles, in which Solomon, the wisest king of the land of Israel, and Saturn, the eldest of the elder gods of Greek mythology, quiz each other on Biblical, runic, and similar mediæval lore. The entire poem is a "riddle contest" between the two greybearded characters after the manner of the Vafthruthnismal and Alvissmal and other similar poems in the Elder Edda. In Solomon and Saturn, though, by including Christian lore as a source for the riddles, the imagery takes on an exotic cast, speaking of the fallen angels, and using the Lord's Prayer as a battle charm.

The poem is also interesting in that the sole manuscript of the poem, in the Codex Vitellius , uses the runic alphabet as a sort of riddling shorthand in which runic characters stand for the words in Old English that name them. From this, we know some of the names for the extended set of runes used to write Old English.

External link

• Solomon and Saturn (Old English)