Notice of Runic Inscriptions discovered during recent Excavations in the Orkneys

An extremely scarce original copy of James Farrer's account of his work on the excavation of Maes-Howe in Stenness, Orkney, together with a few other barrows. James Farrer (1812-1879) was MP for Durham and an enthusiastic member of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. He 'opened' the mound in July 1861, at which time it had a conical shape, and removed the contents. Sadly, and typically of the time, there was no systematic analysis and recording. Farrer discovered a number of runic inscriptions inside the tomb and this work has images of them with translations. The binding has a gilt design (copied from the runic inscriptions in the Howe) to the front board and gilt titles to spine. Contents: colour printed frontispiece with tissue-guard; title page; contents list; preface; text with 5 plates - 2 double size and one colour printed; appendix; readings of the inscriptions with 7 further plates - 2 double size. The binding is bright and clean. There is light wear with some cloth loss to all corners and a small pale mark on the back board. The spine has cloth wear at the rear spine joint and wear and pulling to spine ends. Internally there is some splitting at the front endpaper joint, but the joint is currently sound. Contents are complete and clean. There is light toning to paper and some offsetting from plates and some light foxing eg to frontispiece tissue guard and margins.…