Ribe healing-stick

The Ribe healing stick (with Rundata signum DR EM85;493, also known as DK SJy41) is a pinewood stick found at Ribe, Denmark, with a heavily pagan-inspired Christian spell. It dates to circa 1300 CE.

Description
Although ostensibly Christian, the charm written on the stick contains several native Germanic elements, such as alliteration and phrases also known from pagan poetry.

The phrase 'nine needs' (ni : no=uþær) appears in several explicitly pagan charms, such as the Swedish Sigtuna plate 1 and the Icelandic spell-book Galdrabók. The term læknæshand ("healing hand") is found in a pagan prayer in the Icelandic poem Sigrdrífumál, while the phrase "heavens above" or "high heaven" (uphimæn, literally "up-heaven") is used in Vǫluspá and in Old Saxon and Old English religious poetry as well as in the inscription on the Skarpåker Stone.

Inscription
The stick has five sides. The final part of line C (after ¶r) has been scraped off with a knife, but faint traces of the runes are still visible. The following readings are from the Scandinavian Runic-text Database. Note that because the fifth side only contains the words þæt : se, it has been included in line D.