The Runic Spear of Rozwadów

Rozwadów is a town southeast of Sandomierz on the river San. Nowadays it’s basically a suburb  of Stalowa Wola. In 1932 local workers discovered a cremation grave with pieces of a spear there. The spear was one of the few that had inscriptions on it including some form of writing. The Polish archeologist Marcjan Śmiszko published a study of the spear in the Polish publication Archeological News (Wiadomości Archeologiczne), the oldest Polish archeological journal. Śmiszko thought he discovered the word KRLUS on the spear. What does KRLUS mean? A number of hypotheses were put together (and repeated mindlessly by others). Mees, Pallych and then Garbacz came up with their theories. Most recently, an interpretation of the writing has been put forth translating it as either: [i]k (e)r(u)ls, or [i]k (e)rlas. Both are “East Germanic”. But what does this spear actually look like?

Well, the spear picture is available in the original Śmiszko article:

Here is the flip side which does not contain writing but only symbols:

This is Śmiszko’s interpretation of the same:

In case it’s not obvious, there is no IK ERULS, or IK ERLAS or even KRLUS. There is instead just the following – RPA. In the first instance the “R” is a regular curved Latin “R” – not a runic “R” at all. The  supposed *laguz rune looks more like a “P” – though admittedly – maybe it’s an “L” but this is far from clear.  Finally, the “A” is also quite like a Latin “A”. Nothing special here.

But what about the alleged “k” (*kaunan) or the “s” (*sōwilō)? They are impossible to see in the above. Here is a highlighted version for better visibility – even here, it’s not clear whether they really are runes – they may be small etchings or just represent damage to the artifact.