Runes 101 - Runes in History - Runemasters

Earlier this month, I was doing some research looking for information around what a runemaster was and came across a quote that I had not seen before.  This quote turned up in a few places and it's as if the phrase and the wording around it were just copied and pasted onto multiple websites:

Let no man carve runes to cast a spell, save first he learn to read them well.

I couldn't find the original source, though every website where I found this quote credited a "viking poet".  I wanted some context for it.  While I recognize that many ancient authors (writers of all kinds) are unknown, what I was searching for was the rest of the poem or the item on which it was carved, anything that would offer more insight into this statement.

I was intrigued by the wording, because it appears to address what it meant to be a rune master - one must know how to read the runes well first.  Once they master that, then they may carve runes.  Perhaps the most interesting part is the bit about casting spells.  This implies that runemasters did spell work, but Wikipedia, for example, states that "a runemaster is someone who specializes in making runestones".  It did not include spell work or casting runes.

Who were the ancient runemasters?  Were they stonemasons, poets, spell casters, healers, readers of the Runes or some combination of these roles?

Were they men or women or both?  Many of the websites I investigated said that runemasters were usually women (but they provided no citation). Tacitus, on the other hand, claimed it was the local priest (chieftain) or the father of the family who read the runes, and other sites state that with few exceptions (e.g., seidr witches), men dominated rune magic.

The term runemaster seems to be a moderately new addition to our language, according to Webster's Dictionary, where a runemaster is defined as a maker of runes, a magician, with Odin being the greatest runemaster of the ancient Germanic world.  Webster also says that the first known use of the term was in 1869.

Confused?  Let me summarize what I believe to be the most accurate or likely interpretation.  If you read my blog with any regularity, you know that I lean strongly toward factual information when it comes to understanding the history in which Runes were used.  For that reason and because of my own research into what life was like before and during the Viking Age, I believe that men did dominate rune work/magic/runestones.  I don't believe they were called runemasters.  I'm not sure we can ever know who or what a runemaster really was or was called a thousand year ago.

This little foray into the term runemaster opens the door for more posts on the subject.  Look for one or two of those later this year.