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.