Kingmoor Runic Ring (Greymoor Hill Ring)

Created with Inkscape and Blender.
To see photos of the ring in polished bronze select size 10, for polished brass size 11, and for antique silver size 3. If you're undecided between brass and bronze, I recommend bronze, the engraving looks darker and stands out more clearly.
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The Kingmoor Ring / Greymoor Hill Ring

Here is a recreation of the Kingmoor Ring, an early medieval Anglo Saxon runic ring uncovered in 1817 by a young man while fixing an old fence on Greymoor-hill in the hamlet of Kingmoor near Carlisle, England (Hamper, 1823, p. 30). The incised legend on the 27 mm diameter gold hoop was inlaid with niello (a black alloy of sulphur with copper, silver, or lead), which dates it to the late 9th century (Mesney, 2017, p. 9). The inscription has not been translated and no Old English or Latin words are recognizeable (Okasha, 2003, p. 34), but of the nine confirmed Anglo-Saxon runic inscribed rings (Mesney, 2017, p. 4), two of the others bear a close variation of this ring's legend, hinting at some meaning now lost.

Runic alphabets were used over a span of more than a thousand years throughout Northern Europe and many variations developed (McLeod & Mees, 2006, p. 13). Continental Germanic tribes brought the Anglo-Saxon runes to Britain in the early 5th century AD, but by the time this ring was made Britain had returned to using Roman letters for most writing (Mesney, 2017, p. 2). It has been speculated that runes may then have had an archaic allure not too disimilar to our modern perception of them--George Stephens says, "as a means to make them more oldfashioned and venerable" (Stephens, 1866, 495-496).

This kind of aesthetic explanation for the inscription is needed when rejecting its semantic content, as Stephens does, calling it "cabalistic gibberish" (Stephens, 1866, p. 500). David Wilson reaches the same conclusion: "As it cannot be interpreted it must be assumed that the inscription is meaningless and of magical import." (Wilson, 1964)

Most of the runes are Anglo Saxon, but the K (ᛣ, "calc") and S appear in rare alternate forms (Mesney, 2017, p.11). The legend transliterates as follows, with the last three runes on the inside of the hoop:
Compare this to two other rings dating to the same century and found in the same area, one in Bramham Moor, Yorkshire, also gold with niello, and another made of agate, likely found in Linstock Castle, Cumbria (Mesney, 2017, p. 8-10).

While the Bramham Moor ring legend uses the more common S rune, and the N and T runes near the end are combined into one, it transliterates identically, though divided into 3, all on the outside.
The Linstock Castle ring inscription diverges further, but not enough to obscure the common origin. R. I. Page argues that the Y rune was substituted for the K rune because the maker of this ring was not familiar with it (Mesney, 2017, p. 12).
Early attempts to translate these sequences are almost not worth mentioning. Writing about the Bramham Moor ring, Francis Drake reports on the conjecture that one word of the inscription translates to "Glastenbury", and the possibility that it's "the wedding ring of some abbot to that monastery", but with scant confidence (Drake, 1736, p.101?). William Hamper took a few questionable steps to reach the perhaps overconfident conlcusion that it translates as "Lætus in morbo", which he expands to "whether in fever or leprosy, let the patient be happy and confident in the hope of recovery." (Hamper, 1923, p. 26)

It's not surprising that a worn object with a mysterious, untranslated inscription would be guessed to have been created for magical purposes. There is archaeological precendent for protection and healing amulets. However, Bruce Dickins found a connection (Symons, 2016, 133) that makes this guess more concrete, though still tenuous and uncertain.

Bald’s Leechbook (British Library MS Royal 12, D xvii) includes a charm thought to be for staunching blood, possibly copied from a ninth century manuscript, making it roughly contemporary with these rings. Amongst the "apparently nonsensical words" (Symons, 2016, p. 134) is "æcrio". A nearly identical charm is found in Bodley MS Auct. F.3.6, where this word is written "aer crio". This is phonetically identical to the "ærkriu" on the Kingmoor and Bramham Moor rings. Howard Meroney gives a possible identification of this as an Old Irish word meaning "for bleeding" (Symons, 2016, pp. 133-135).

While none of this gives us much clarity about the meaning of this inscription, the near-identical sequence on three separate rings and the connection to these leechbook charms shows that even though we don't know a literal translation, this is no random sequence of runes--they did have some significance to whoever made or commissioned the Kingmoor Ring. It's even possible he did the same as I've done here, and re-created a specific sequence of runes with a believed but unknown meaning.

What I've endeavored to replicate here is that inscription as well as its style and arrangement as it appears on the Kingmoor ring. While a replica in the sense of a copy might mimic everything about the ring, both in materials and in form, possibly including wear and results of manufacturing limitations, I have instead sought to envision an intended consistent form and style behind the flaws and inconsistencies. The runes don't appear here in some neutral, generic form, but are rendered in the specific shapes found on the original.

Bibliography

Drake, Francis, Eboracum, or the History and Antiquities of the City of York, 1736

Hamper, William; Observations on a Gold Ring with a Runic Inscription, Archaeologia, vol. xxi, London, 1827 (Letter written in 1823)

MacLeod, Mindy & Mees, Bernard; Runic Amulets and Magic Objects, 2005

Mesney, Perry; Anglo-Saxon Runic Rings, 2017

Okasha, Elizabeth; Anglo-Saxon Inscribed Rings, Leeds Studies in English, 2003

Stephens, George; The Old-Northern Runic Monuments of Scandinavia and England, 1866

Symons, Victoria, Runes and Roman Letters in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, 2016

Wilson, David Mackenzie; Anglo-Saxon Ornamental Metalwork 700 - 1100, 1964