A rare Scandinavian lunar runic calendar staff, Åbo (Turku), Finland, possibly 16th / 17th...

A rare Scandinavian lunar runic calendar staff, Åbo (Turku), Finland, possibly 16th / 17th century, with knopped handle and tapering hexagonal shaft with incised runes, 125.5cm long

Provenance: Sotheby's, The Charterhouse School Collection, 5 November 2002.

Note: This example is listed in the Runic Calendar Project by Sven-Göran Hallonquist (The Royal Institute of Technology). 

Calendar staffs originate from the Roman calendar tradition preserved and developed within the Christian Church and were used for tracking the Sundays, holidays, important days of each year and the appearance of the New Moon. In addition to this purely calendric information, the staffs often had cubit, foot and inch markings. Runic Staffs specifically are an entirely Swedish tradition that were present in the regions inhabited by Swedish people in the 16th and 17th centuries, such as Finland and the Estonian Islands. There are calendar staffs in Norway and Denmark, but these generally do not have runes. The use of runic staffs in Sweden spread to the peasantry in the 16th century but began to decline in the 17th century due to the yearly publication of the almanac. Despite several attempts from the Government at the end of the century to revive the peasant use of the staffs it died out except in certain areas such as Upper Siljan (Ovansiljan) in Dalecarlia, where it was still in use in the 18th century. From the end of the 17th century the educated elite at Uppsala University were taught the use and construction of the runic staffs as they became used primarily as symbols of status.