Exeter Book Riddle 69 (according to the numbering of the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records) is one of the Old English riddles found in the later tenth-century Exeter Book. Its interpretation has occasioned a range of scholarly investigations, but clearly has something to do with ice and is likely indeed to have the solution 'ice'.
Contents
Text
As edited by Krapp and Dobbie in the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records series, Riddle 69 is the shortest text of the Exeter Book:
However, since at least 1858, editors have discussed reading the riddles numbered by Krapp and Dobbie as 68 and 69 as one text. This is inconsistent with the manuscript punctuation, but works well in terms of the otherwise observable conventions of Old English riddles' form and helps to make sense of Riddle 68:
Current scholarship is divided on this question, with recent commentators arguing both for reading 68 and 69 as discrete texts or as one text.
Interpretation
Reading the riddle as 'Ice', Murphy argues that 'the solution snaps the text into sudden focus and reveals the great wonder of a commonplace thing'.