{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.03867713004484305, 'fraction_numerical': 0.011771300448430493, 'mean_word_length': 4.776699029126213, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
"Skep" (Beinenkorb, *beoleap) as a Culture-Specific Solution to Exeter Book Riddle 17

The solution to Exeter Book Riddle 17 (Muir’s numbering)1 was formerly such a mystery that editors despaired, both Williamson (Old English Riddles 176) and Muir (2: 618) labeling the riddle “uncertain” in their editions. The rune Beorc (B) above the text has suggested burg and ballista, but German and Dutch scholars have recently favored a solution involving beekeeping. My essay endorses this solution, examines a crux, argues for a connection with a riddle by Aldhelm, and concludes with an emphasis on the importance of specificity for a modern reader of Anglo-Saxon texts. Many of the Exeter Book riddles have so far failed to find clear solutions. Along with a few classical “arbitrary riddles”2 for which the answer is well known (like Riddle 85, “a one-eyed seller of garlic”) and a number of religious riddles and translations from earlier Latin riddles, the majority of these brief poems depend on a knowledge of objects and creatures familiar to the Anglo-Saxons for their answer: ships, swans, the bull whose hide becomes leather, chickens, quill pens, a book-eating moth, and so forth. Even the few salacious riddles refer to items such as onions, helmets, dough, and butter churns. A number of riddles are clear to a degree but leave the specific solution in doubt: for example, is the musical instrument in Riddle 31 a bagpipe, a “Sutton Hoo” type lyre, or a related stringed instrument (since it is described as sellic “rare” in the hall, it is probably not the familiar lyre, now confirmed by several additional English finds3), and does Riddle 15 refer to a fox or a hedgehog?4 Yet even these alternatives, with the arguments that are made for them, give us scraps of a culture.