Williams, Henrik. Read what’s there: interpreting Runestone Inscriptions, Futhark international journal of runic studies: Lancaster, 2005.

            Williams, Henrik. Read what’s there: interpreting Runestone Inscriptions, Futhark international journal of runic studies: Lancaster, 2005.

It has been assumed that a lot of rune stone texts have writing errors. Some times catching these writing errors are obvious, for example in words like ‘raise’ or ‘stone’ but runologists also look for and find spelling errors in runes writing things as obscure as names. These writing mistakes take the form of erroneous runes, (using one rune when a different rune would be more appropriate) arbitrarily omitted runes, and superfluous runes.

            The subject of miscarving has long been contentious, philologists have a tendency to want to assume few, or no miscarvings. They try to explain the phonetic misspellings by suggesting some form of ancient grammar and language that we simply can’t understand at this point. In 1913 Otto von Friesen conducted a study on some forty runestone inscriptions in upland among which he found between thirty and forty certain or probably miscarvings.

            It is the opinion of Henrik that this negative attitude by otto Von Friesen and many other runologists has given runology a bad name. early runologists such as carl save, Richard dybeck and George stephens did a great deal of work towards publishing or illustrating rune stones, they did a great deal of damage also though by adding their own very fanciful translations. This can in part be forgiven because of the great difficulty and ambiguity of runestone transcribing, but transcribing should be conducted more scientifically.

            Henrik feels that many of the early runologists were under the impression that they understood how to write runes better then the earliest runic inscribers. This idea and way of transcribing was probably something left over from neo-colonialism, the idea that the native population does not understand the proper way of doing things. The fact that Friesen would look at a runic inscription and decide that it was transcribed poorly is quite preposterous, there is so little we understand of the proto Germanic that was spoken, and the way that runic values changed over time.

            The danger of misinterpretations regarding miscarvings is we trick ourselves into judging the competence of runeographers, which has huge implications of our view of rune readers, runic literacy, and rune function. If we want to understand the people who carved the runes, and the culture they lived in, we must try to look past words that we regard as miscarved and try to find meaning beyond that.

            Scholars run into the danger of taking a word that they suppose to be a miscarving, and adding their own meaning to it. This is obviously dangerous because it changes the entire meaning of a text.

            There is a monumental stone dating from the late Viking age with an inscription bearing the word tekr it has been assumed by scholars that this is a miscarving and probably means trekr. Judith Jesch (1998) suggests that trekr is a word draengr, having strong connotations of an in group, and intimacy within that group. The danger with this supposition is that it is a supposition based off of what we assume to be an error. It is a hard thing to make a historical argument based entirely off of what we think is an error. Other scholars have suggested that the word is a delabilized version of ‘alert, adept’ giving an entirely different meaning to the text.

            A number of runic sequences have been interpreted by assuming  that the orthography is not to be trusted. Even though there are clear examples of misspellngs and errors in runic transcriptions, we should remember that we don’t have an answer book, we must exercise care when interpreting runes, and not fall into the trap of assuming mistakes, there is still too much that is just unknown about proto Germanic and the writing tradition of the time.

            

Texts & contexts of the oldest Runic inscriptions Tineke Looijenga tribe names, and magic

            What causes a major issue when seeking out the origins of the runes is that the oldest runes are found in far northern territories, but the only direct contact we know about between literate peoples and Germanic tribes happens at the limes of the Rhine, the limes  make up the border between Germanic tribes, and the Roman empire. As discussed earlier the only places that offer a viable matrix alphabet are the Alphabets of Rome, and the Mediterranean in general.

            There are three main possible categories for people who could have developed runes. 1. A Romanized tribe of Germans living along the Roman Border. 2. Mercenaries serving in the Roman Army. 3. Merchants, of which Germans had plenty.

            The earliest Runic inscriptions are found far north, in Denmark and Scandinavia. this punches a slight hole in the theory involving mercenaries or a Romanized tribe developing futhark. Taking that into consideration we do find a large amount of Roman goods in far northern Denmark and Scandinavia, there are examples of weapons, armor, drinking and eating utensils, all of these can be found around the first century AD, suggesting that even though there are  no records of Mercenaries being pulled directly from these regions, there is still ample trade and communication carried out between Roman culture, and the citizens of these regions.

            If we look at the words written on the earliest runic inscriptions we can find clues to their origins, aside from their resting places. The comb dating from about 160 AD with the runes “Harja” on it may be a reference to a tribe name. there is a tribe from the lower Rhine called Harii. Furthermore the name Harja is a Germanic name common of the lower rhine region, and not found further north.

            The weapons that have the smiths names carved in, or even in one case stamped into their blades represent a copying of Roman traditions. It was very common for Roman soldiers to put their names into their weapons. These spear heads and weapons (wagnijo on spear heads, and nithijo on a shield handle) were found in war booty that was deposited in bogs far north. This is probably an example of tensions temporary tensions between southern and northern Germanic tribes.

            The major bog finds ranging from 160-450 AD have a massive amount of Roman military goods in them, these weapons and armor were clearly not made in Scandinavia, showing a serious roman context for runes (because a lot of the weapons and armor had runes on them) and showing there was ample trade going on between the lower Rhineland and Scandinavia. 

            All early Runic inscriptions have either a military influence (weapons and armor) or a luxury influence (combs, cups, jewelry) most of the luxury goods we find are once again influenced by Roman culture, before the influence of Roman culture Germans didn’t tend to drink out of Goblets, or wear Romanized jewelry (bracteates).

            It is also known that many Germanic Personal Names are derived from Germanic Tribal names. Most of the names that are found on the runes can correlate best with names with a west Germanic Origin, suggesting that weather it came from Merceneries, Merchants, or a Romanized Tribe, it happened first in western Germany, and spread from there.

            Runes and rituals: it is unclear what rituals were involved with runes. It is true that many scholars believe the runes were used for magic, but there is no unambiguous text to help support this theory. There is some evidence in how many rune writings have sequences of letters like aaaaazzznnnn or bwseeekkkkkaaaaa. It could be these were phonetic examples for chants, or runes written for magical purposes.

            Bracteates may have had a magical purpose, seeing as they were basically used as amulets, and made of Gold, both suggesting a Roman connection. They also tended to be found in bogs, peat layers, and hoards. If you recall from my transcription exercise, one of the bracteates had a letter sequence of aaaa this is an example of a possible ‘magical’ purpose of that bracteate. 

transcribing

The pieces I chose are all examples of the older futhark, I found these pieces in the back of the book  Looijenga, Tineke. Texts and contexts of the oldest runic inscriptions. Leiden, NLD. Brill academic publishers, 2003.

phonetic translation: tllhdlomal

phonetic translation: ltezugal

phonetic translation: edital     osthin

this plate of metal appears to have been broken out of shape, this might have been done before it was tossed into a lake or bog, as sacrifice, tribute, or some way to insure that it could not be used in the after life by the spirits of the defeated enemies. It is unclear if these runes were in place originally, or if these runes were added before they were “sacrificed”

phoetic translation:

izthntbn

zwel dw

ernmnlnu

n rungygugeu

fglghgzh?d

idzruoro

this piece posed a particular challenge, there is a recurring ‘astrix’ sign that I could find no translation for, it shows up more often then any other runes which makes me think it might have been used as a word divider, it also resembles the rune for g, which is an X and it is possible that this inscription decided to add an additional line through the middle from top to bottom, but I am still very unsure of its usage.

phonetic translation: lathuadeaeliiu    all

this is a great example of a ‘bracteate’

phonetic translation: dedagadmaaaa

this particular bracteates was difficult to figure out, I was unsure of what direction to read it in, because left to right showed all the runes upside down, I decided on right to left. This particular piece shows possible cultural borrowings from rome, the soldier with the military cap looks particularly roman in style (the individual seems to have a beard, but he is wearing a roman styled helmet) and under that we see an animal, probably a wolf, feeding two human babies, most likely in reference to remus and Romulus.

phonetic translation: zkfiiz?igimhljffusi

the craftsmen who inscribed the pommel of this sword let his runes match the shape of the pommel. Most of the runes maintain a legible shape, but they change a great deal depending in the where they are located, this lack of standardization is the bane of runologists, and this particular piece gave me a head ache. The extremely small runes are hard to distinguish, and some of the tall runes are equally distorted.

phonetic translation: inu?z?g

partly because of the stylization that the craftsmen chose for this particular piece, the runes were shaped differently than most other pieces.

phonetic translation: uth?drdwugngz

Most examples of runes that archaeologists have to learn from are scratched into things, as can be seen here, this often looks more like bathroom graffiti then something written by an educated scholar. This is because of a lack of standardization, and a culture that didn’t put high value on scholarly things, but more on military things.

Dahm, Murray K. “The roman frontier signaling and the order of the Futhark.” The Journal Of Indo-European Studies 39 (2011) 1-12.

            The order of the Futhark has long puzzled scholars. It does not seem to follow any of the traditional rules of alphabet adoption, but the order is found often enough that scholars are pretty secure in saying that is the official order. The break up of the futhark is thus f u p a r k g w / h n i j ï p z s / t b e m l ! o d. notice it is in no way divided phontecically. (I want to add that this division is laid out by Dahm, he chose to write the futhark this way, using the latin inspirations, not the actual runes.)

            Murray Dahm believes that the Futhark was most likely derived from the latin alphabet, and follows Henrik Williams thought that shape alone gives us the origin of the runes (a discussion of Williams’ writing can be found in an earlier entry of this blog) like Williams he believes that the inventor of the runes was most likely a German who was intimately aware of the latin alphabet. It might be that the sound values of the futhark were added later. (this belief may be why Dahm refers to it as fupark in his article, as recognizing the p shape in the [th] symbol)

            The creator of the Futhark had to be aware of Roman culture, we must accept that if the futhark was inspired by Roman Alphabets, it had to also be tied into roman culture. Part of this roman culture can be found at walls, palisades, and forts at the edges of the Roman Frontier. There are the obvious examples like at Hadrians Wall in Britain. There were also barriers at Raetia, and Germania. These various fortifications offer an explanation, and various locations of where Roman culture would have been disseminated to Germanic peoples.

            These forts and towers had the capabilities of signaling messages to each other, and used these signals to send information back to the interior of Rome. Not too surprisingly we don’t know very much about these signaling systems, most likely because these signaling systems would have been held as very high priority military secrets.

            We learn bits and pieces about how these signaling systems worked from different primary sources of the ancient world. Probably the best description of one of these signaling systems comes from Africanus in his Kestoi, a collection of miscellaneous information relating chiefly to magic, but other subjects too. His Kestoi was dedicated to Emperor Severus Alexander (reigned AD 222-245) His information on signaling is a lot then the origin date of Futhark, but it is likely that the signaling during the time of the futhark was not so different.

In chapter 77 Africanus includes this observation (translation by J. P. Wild (Wooliscroft2001, 168):

"The Romans have the following technique which seems to me to be amazing. If they want to communicate something by fire signal, they make the signals so: they select places that are suitable for making fire signals. They divide the fires into a right, a leftand a middle fire so that they read alpha to theta from the left-hand one, iota to pi from the middle one and rho to omega from the right-hand fire. If they signal alpha, they raise up the fire signal on the leftonce, for beta twice and for gamma three times. If they signal iota they raise the middle fire once, for kappa twice and for lambda thrice, and if they want to signal rho, sigma or tau, they raise the right-hand signal once, twice or three times. In this way should you want to signal rho you do not need to raise hundreds of fire signals, but only one with the right-hand torch. Those who receive the signals then de-code them in the same way, or pass them on to the next station."

            Africanus was a Greek and thus would have described the Greek alphabet, but this same method would have been used to send latin signals, and latin was the language of the roman military. Through out the Roman empire the military conducted all of it’s messages and transcripts in Latin, Egyptian troops would have used Latin, Greek troops would have used Latin, and Germanic troops would have used Latin. They may have spoken to each other in their own languages, but messages were not sent in languages of ‘defeat’.

            Germanic troops would have learned the Latin alphabet within the context of signaling. This could explain why the Futhark is divided into three separate sections, with 8 runes represented in each section. By dividing the futhark like this each letter could be represented cryptographically. So to send the signal for c, you simply had to send the signal 1/6 meaning the first grouping, sixth rune.

            If a code was broken, it could be disastrous for military campaigns. If the enemy understood your code, they could send false signals to your allies, causing chaos on both sides, leaving places of weakness open, that is aside from the basic handiness of knowing when forts would be at their weakest. Since these codes were so valuable to the strategy and lives of soldiers, it is very likely that the code was changed often, and because it was changed often a key probably needed to be given to everyone, so they would be able to fact check the signals they received.

            This key was probably a grid that laid out the various values for each of the letters, the inventor of Futhark most likely had access to one of these grid systems, or keys. It does not matter if this grid was out of date, it would have been extremely useful in guiding him in his invention of futhark. The division of the futhark is a great clue to a military origin, adding to the theory of a Latin origin.