#rune request

@falkabarn​ requested “No frith with fascists!” in Old West Norse and matching runes. Since I knew I was gonna go all-out with this one I did make some choices to favor legibility over pure accuracy, like leaving the n before the k. The only difference between the left and the right is the diacritics to mark e and g, and I changed the nasal ą to a in the second since you’re more likely (though not certain) to see that along with runes marked with diacritics.

In Old Norse the subject of a sentence is usually in the nominative case, but this isn’t actually a complete grammatical sentence. It’s more like góðan dag ‘good day’ where the whole phrase is expressed in the accusative case rather than the nominative, góðr dagr. This sort of construction probably originates in shortening a longer sentence like hafðu góðan dag ‘have a good day’ where ðu/þú ‘you’ is the subject of the sentence. So rather than engi friðr, we’ll say engan frið.

The word engi/enginn ‘nothing; no one’ varies heavily in Old Norse texts and we could just as easily say enga or øngvan, but engan is the one that eventually won out, and our phrase will end up being the same in both Old Norse and Modern Icelandic.

I’ll use the modern Icelandic word fasisti ‘fascist.’

‘No frith with fascists’ engan frið með fasistum inkąn friþ miþ fasistum ïnk̈an friþ mïþ fasistum

I got a rune request from someone who I believe is not on Tumblr, but it was indicated that it can be shared. The request was for “Meat is murder. Real warriors eat plants” in Elder Futhark with matching language.

This is mostly straightforward but working with Elder Futhark-era language is always a bit speculative. ketwa morþa ist is pretty secure but we run into complications right away in the second sentence. Words for ‘real’ are divergent in daughter languages and kind of clunky (Ice. raunverulegur, broken into its components something like ‘verified-being-ly’) which gives an impression they were formed later than Proto-Norse. I switched in sanþaʀ (ON sannr) which is better translated as ‘true.’ Hopefully this just seems like a distinction without a difference. Fortunately there is an attested nominative plural masculine adjective in the Proto-Norse runic corpus (on the Tune stone) so we can be confident of the ending -ēʀ. For details about grammatical endings like this I use The Unaccented Vowels of Proto-Norse by Martin Syrett (the classic work on the subject is Die Sprache der urnordischen Runeninschriften by Wolfgang Krause, but Syrett’s is more up-to-date and more grounded in direct written evidence and less in comparative reconstructionism).

For ‘warriors’ we have too many options to choose from from various daughter languages but few of them mean ‘warrior’ and ONLY ‘warrior,’ often carrying some other semantic baggage; I used Gothic gadrauhts simply because of how early it’s attested and because it should be at least analyzable if not actually used in Scandinavia.

*grōðra (nom *grōþraʀ) should be pretty secure. I’m not sure it’s the word they would have used but it should at least make sense.

Germanic words for ‘eat’ are a little weird. Many languages distinguish what human do with food and what animals do with food, so for example when a person eats in Icelandic they borða but when an animal does it they éta. Once again, I simply chose the Gothic. This admittedly adds a little weirdness to the phrase, because matjan is etymologically related to the word meat, like if meat were a verb (but just means ‘eat’). This doesn’t really contradict anything though, as *mataz doesn’t come down into Norse meaning ‘meat,’ but just ‘food’ generally, and if anything it might be taken to emphasize the point.

I threw in word and clause markers but for this to be more realistic the runes would more likely just run together. The “n” in sanþēʀ is not shown before a homorganic consonant.

ketwa : morþa : ist . saþeʀ : gadrohtiʀ : groþra : matjan Ketwa morþa ist. Sanþēʀ gadrohtīʀ grōþra matjan [meat  murder is] [true       warriors  vegetation eat] 'Meat is murder; true warriors eat plants.'

(For full disclosure I’m not vegetarian myself, though most meat that I do eat is freegan).

@capndinokitties​ wanted to see “be gay, do crime“ in Elder Futhark and matching language.

The word gay is a little hard to translate here. We don’t have a good reconstructable Proto-Germanic word to use, so we’ll have to get interpretive. An argument could be made for using argr (*argaz, n.plur. *argu), though an argument could also be made for specifically avoiding it, and it’s not a decision I want to make for someone else. I’m going to suggest an alternative that definitely didn’t mean that in 400 AD (which, *argaz didn’t either), but is inspired by Modern Icelandic usage. Modern Icelandic hýr has a similar lexical range to English gay. Originally it means something like ‘mild, friendly, happy (in appearance)’ and has come to be used for ‘gay’ in modern times. Dictionaries tend to define it as samkynhneigður (’homosexual’) but it is used in a more general sense applicable to any LGBTGNC identity. It surely did not have meanings related to sexuality in ancient times, but then, neither did gay, and it doesn’t have the baked-in negative implications of argr. In Proto-Norse we could expect to see this as *hiurijaʀ.

The Germanic verbs had different imperative conjugations for different numbers; I’m writing this in the plural, which also means the adjective *hiurijaʀ will be in the plural neuter (*hiuriju).

Old English has an astounding number of words meaning ‘crime’ which seems to imply that there’s a wide variety to choose from for an older stratum of the language, but since OE is not my specialty and I’m less capable of navigating those words than I am with ON, I’ll go with what I know and use a reconstructed form of glǿpr. In Old Norse, the whole thing would be: verið hýr, fremið glǿpa.

Following Krause 1971, Die Sprache der urnordischen Runeninschriften for raising in *wisiþ (rather than **wesiþ).

‘Be gay, do crime(s)’ wisiþ hiuriju framiþ glōpijan wisiþ : hiuriju : framiþ : glopijan

[edit: I caught an error I made, fortunately I caught it fairly quickly: I confused the comparative adjective suffix -aʀi (’more [adjective]’)with the agentive suffix -ari (’one who does [verb]’). I’ve fixed the error]

@thebitternessinmyblood has requested the sentence “the moon is my only lover” written in Old East Norse and matching runes. “Matching” in this case could mean either long or short twig, but converting between the two is pretty simple. Since thebitternessinmyblood is Swedish, I’ll use short-twig since that was more predominant there.

There are two words for moon, one the actual cognate Máni which is also the name of the moon god in Norse mythology, and the other tungl which is more common and not personified (except in later Icelandic folklore). In one line of Gylfaginning, Snorri implies that Máni is not the tungl, but the one who causes the tungl to move:

Máni stýrir gǫngu tungls ok ræðr nýjum ok niðum. ‘Máni steers the course of the tungl and determines the full and new moon.’

I don’t really have a way to choose between the two, so I’ll do the both. On the spelling of Máni, because the n will be written out in the word, there is no distinction between the oral a written with the ár rune and the nasal ą written with the óss rune. I’m choosing to use óss, because that’s the way the Rök stone does it (stąnta standa, mąnum mǫnnum, ąnart annart).

As would be expected for a language spoken by so many poets, there are several words for ‘lover,’ but the most straightforward is elskari (ælskari). I thought about using elskhugi which is probably the best for Modern Icelandic, but it seems it was not very commonly used with that particular meaning in Old Norse, and while it’s attested in Old Swedish (Noreen has it as ælskoghe, though note that the Old Swedish Noreen documented was considerably younger than the East Norse we’re working with) it seems to have meant love, not lover, as it presumably did originally in Old Icelandic as well.

I would render this sentence:

Māninn/Tunglit es minn ēni ælskari

which in Old Icelandic would be:

Máninn/Tunglit es minn eini elskari

To write this in runes, I’ll use the style of the Rök stone, but the particular rune-forms can be switched out for others. I’m also leaving out word boundary markers because they were not used often in that historical context, though they could be added for clarity.

‘The moon is my only lover.’ Māninn/Tunglit es minn ēni ælskari mąnin / tuklit is min ini alskari

@captainsigge​ requested “Blood of my blood - bone of my bone“ in archaic Old Norse and matching runes. For this super old, probably-didn’t-actually-exist archaic language, I’ll use the earliest younger futhark preserving some archaic rune shapes, as seen on the Ribe skull and the Helnæs runestone DR 190. This is the most straightforward one of these I’ve gotten in a long time, and I don’t even have much material to offer by way of my usual linguistic preambles. The only thing I’ll point out is that while the construction “[noun] of [noun]” like in the English is possible in Old Norse, it’s pretty rare, nonstandard, and can be associated with the romance genre of literature. For example, we usually refer to Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, but sometimes the title is given in manuscripts as Sagan af Agli Skallagrímssyni. I’m not gonna do that, I’m doing this in the style of Egils saga Skallagrímssonar. Used a “:” spacer in the middle, but let the words run together (as on the aforementioned stone).

“Blood of my blood - bone of my bone“ blóð blóðs míns - bæin bæinaʀ minnaʀ bluþ bluþs mis : bain bainaʀ minaʀ

@grimnirslee wanted the phrase “I am becoming who I am.” We weren’t really sure what time period to go with so I said I’d do a few things and explain the differences between them.

A complication came up immediately. The Old Norse syntax requires a demonstrative pronoun (something like ‘that one’), more like what in English would be “I am becoming (he who/she who) I am”:

(he) ek em at verða sá es ek em

(she) ek em at verða sú es ek em

But neither of these apply to Lee (they/them). Norse does have a version of this that is gender-neutral: ek em at verða þat es ek em. But I wasn’t prepared to just supply the demonstrative pronoun þat without checking to make sure it’s appropriate, because it happens to be a homonym of þat ‘it.’ It isn’t ‘it,’ it’s ‘that (one),’ and I was pretty sure that was the right way to do it, but it seemed like this was outside of my ability to call.

Of course, Old Norse is famously similar to Modern Icelandic, and this is something that has to be dealt with in Iceland. This isn’t the first time I’ve turned to Modern Icelandic to make use of Old Norse in a modern context, and it won’t be the last.

There are a number of gender-neutral pronouns in use in Iceland. The most common is hán, and is equivalent to something like singular they, ze, xe, thon, and others in English . In the table below, which comes from University of Iceland linguist Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson’s class materials (from https://www.mbl.is/frettir/innlent/2016/01/09/thad_kys_enginn_ad_vera_kalladur_thad_4/), the first four columns are personal pronouns (’he,’ ‘she,’ ‘it,’ and hán) followed by demonstrative pronouns (’that one (m.),’ ‘that one (f.),’ ‘that one (n)’).

When I was in school in Iceland I was told about several of these personal pronouns, but hán was the only full paradigm that we were actually checked on to make sure we knew it. I don’t know if there are usage statistics but it certainly seems to be the most common. Others include hín, hé, and þau (which is equivalent to singular they).

The fact that some Icelanders do use þau also threw me off, because as you can see from the table above, þau is also a (plural) demonstrative pronoun, so that also seemed to suggest itself as a solution here. I’ve even written about it and why I like it for linguistic nerd reasons on this blog.

Anyway, I consulted with some people in Iceland who are more knowledgeable than I am and they confirmed my thought that, when used specifically as a demonstrative, það is totally normal and is regularly done. 

If we’re to push that back into Proto-Norse to write it in elder futhark, it gets tricky. Though þat can be easily reconstructed to *þata, I’m not sure what to do with es/er. I usually recourse to Gothic because of how old it is, though my Gothic isn’t really up to snuff. I *believe* we would want to use Gothic þatei (or, I guess, þata ei). It doesn’t seem we can truly use the reconstructionist method here but signs point to it being something like PGmc. *ī. This usage of the particle at which functions like English to before an infinitive (at verða ’to become’ = ‘becoming’) is also insecure.This is my best guess for how to do it in Proto-Norse and elder futhark, but it really is not secure. I’m including word boundary markers but as always feel free to take them out (it’s probably more realistic to remove them), and also to substitute rune shapes:

‘I am becoming who I am’ ik im at werþan þata ī ik im ik.im.at.werþan.þata.ik.im

Doing this in Viking-age runes is much more secure. The choice between es and eʀ is basically arbitrary, both are used in Viking-age inscriptions. Eventually they are replaced by sem/som/sum.

In the very early Viking period we’d expect something like this. The first is before the change (reform?) to using single staves for all runes, followed by typical Danish style and typical Swedish style (based on the Rök stone). I used es and eʀ is there but grayed out so it’s easy to spot.

ek em at verða þat es ek em ik.im.at.uirþa.þat.is.ik.im

A more typically (but not exclusively) Norwegian style uses digraphs for vowels like e and loses ʀ early. This also allows us to show nasalization of the vowel in em and break up the mass of i-runes a bit. You could put boundary markers between ek and em like I did above but at this point it feels like I’m using too many of them to make this look like a 10th-century Norse person did it, so this one is a little bit inconsistent for realism (I can change that if you don’t like it). I chose er instead of es specifically to show ʀ > r has happened:

ek em at verða þat er ek em ikąm.at.uirþa.þat.iar.ikiąm

Moving forward in time a bit we get the option of diacritics to mark vowels more precisely. I’ve never done this before, but following the advice of Michael Barnes in Runes: A Handbook I’m going to start showing them in the transliteration (the bold text) with diaeresis, so that for example ᛂ is not e but rather ï.

ïk.ïm.at.uïrþa.þat.ïr.ïk.ïm

And then by the late and post-medieval periods we can find things more like this, the first being more typical for the Scandinavian peninsula and the second being basically the same Icelandic runes as they were used into the 20th century (and which Teresa Dröfn Freysdóttir Njarðvík is trying to revive):

1st: ïk.äm.at.uïrþa.þat.är:ïk.ïm 2nd: ég er að verða það sem ég er ïk̈.ïr.aẗ.uïrẗa.þaẗ.sïm.ïk̈.ïr

I uhh... I’m not sure I like the diaeresis thing. It makes sense for runology but I don’t know if that’s gonna make sense to more than 3% of people reading this. I might go back to the old way. I dunno. But anyway that’s it for this request, as always feel free to ask questions or for elaboration.

The Assata Shakur quote in Viking-age long-twig.

‘“It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.” -- Assata’

Oss berr at bærjask til frjalsis várs. Oss berr at sigʀa Véʀ æigum at unna hvær ǫðrum auk styðja hvær ǫnnr. Véʀ hǫfum þar ængu at tapa ǫðru en hlækkjunum. Assata sagði

us : bir : at : bariask : til : frialsis :uars us : bir : at :sikʀa uiʀ : aikum : at : una : huar : aþrum : auk : stuþia : huar : ąnr uiʀ : hafum : þar : ąku : at : taba : aþru : in : hlakiunum asata : sakþi

I adapted the last line from the Icelandic translation of the Communist Manifesto (Kommúnistaávarpið). It’s not how I would have done it (véʀ hǫfum etki at tapa nema hlækkjunum) but the translation is from 1926. The grammar is intentionally wrong for ON; it should say hværiʀ instead of hvær but I used the plural neuter rather than plural masculine as is slowly becoming more common in contemporary Icelandic.

I submitted a request (to see how the form works). I asked for “Death to all who stand in the way of freedom for working people” in Viking-age Old West Norse and early dotted "stungnar" runes.

Dauði sé ǫllum er standa ĩ veg fyrir frjalsi vinnanda folks tauþi.se.alum.er.stąta.i.ueg.fyrir.frialsi.uinąta.fulks