I’m a little disappointed, I thought that this was going to be a tongue in cheek launch of a new mystical group known as “The Order of the Futhark.” But this is good too! 😂
This Luke Ranieri collab is a great series!! I have been watching with interest and learning much from both of you. I was required to have 2 years of Latin in high school and i had 2 years of Spanish in college- one year Cuban Spanish and 1 year Spanish Castillian Spanish.. My Mother's Mother, My Mother and My Mother's Sister majored in Latin in college and my Grandmother Mother's Mother majored in Latin and Greek and she knew it until the day she died! My older brother and my sister took years of Latin in high school. My brother and my Father learned German.
@@micheleguglielmana2568 Who? Sorry, which who are you asking about? Luke Ranieri? That is who is standing next to Dr Crawford. Luke Ranieri is an expert in Latin and Ancient Greek.
That's a lineage to be proud of! Damn! .... and here's me all puffed up because because one great-grandmother attended a totally illegal Flying School when she was a young girl in Warsaw.
@@ak5659 Yes I just wanted to inform Luke Ranieri how much Latin and ancient Greek was learned in my family as well as some other modern languages learned :) Not boasting here.
Absolutely loving these videos with Luke! Your content is always fantastic, I just got my money situation figured out and am glad to say I’m now a patron. Can’t wait to see more excellent content in the future!
The cyrilic is called "azbuka", from "az" and "buki", the names of the first two letters. They literally mean "I, me" and "book". The name of the alphabet came organically, the students were ask to learn the "az" and the "buki", hence the name.
I have to say, that when I first saw the title, and knowing Jackson's sense of humor, I thought he was going to induct Luke into "The Order of the Futhark".
So, when two linguists get together and don’t get along, what does that look like? “There’s NO WAY the Roman alphabet is descended through Etruscan!” “Leave this house.”
The use of writing the entire alphabet sequence on objects is also typically found in pre-roman Italy. Sometimes, instead of writing single letters, they wrote all the possibile combinations of consonants and vowels (like KA KE KI KO KU and so on).
13:48 "elementa" in the metaphoric sense was not just used about "the four elements" but in fact also about "atoms" (of Epicure). This is a thing that Karl Marx missed in his thesis, he argued against Colossians 2:8 warning against Epicureans as thitherto traditionally taught, because precisely he thought "elementa" was such a good fit for the four elements. But the word also refers to atoms in Epicure's sense, and the metaphor is more transparent there, since elementa in the one sense make up words and elementa (atoms) in the other sense make up bodies.
I can absolutely see the written form being worn as adornments as a symbolization of power, and a certain degree of superiority. Not just that, but i think there's a certain respect to it, in that it empowers people to leave their spoken word behind for others to witness long after they're gone. In a lot of ways, the ability to read and write changes the dynamics of a civilization entirely, and in an age where literacy isn't something that you 'just learned' as it is today, i can see people decorating adornments with this symbol of power, of prosperity, of legacy.
Ive read that, in Swedish, fitta originally meant wet meadow, or 'fertile ground'. The fact that the ruines begin with this was perhaps intented to mean that writing was a seed that was to be spread in order to grow culture, spirituality or something, maybe. Ok, probably not.
It's interesting because in Slavic languages we also often use some form of the word "elementarno" (elementary) to say that something is very basic and easy. I wonder if that might be the reason to call the alphabet that way.
I rememben seeing a book like that at a (great?)grandparents' house when I was a kid. But at that time I was beyond that and reading the magenta "Mowimy po Polku" so I was uninterested because I was beyond Elementarz. Now I look back and remember the really old fonts & handwriting examples and wish I'd grabbed it. But I was smart enough to grab my grandfather's 1904 Esperanto textbook :-)
Saw your title and was excited to be hearing about some new knightly association centered upon interest in proto/old norse. A little disappointed. I would definitely joined the Patreon for something like that.
we still call the alphabet in czech "abeceda". it is traditional, one attested use comes from a satiric song from early 15cc (begining of hussite revolution) as a denotation to archbishop's (zbyněk zajíc z hazmburka) analphabetism/illiteracy: zbyněk biskup abeceda spálil knihy, a nevěda, co je v nich napsáno... (bishop sbygneus the alphabet, burned the books, and not knowing their content... ). good vid, i like yr collabs!
Perhaps the "futha" might not have been considered obscene or profane at all, as Luca suggests, but rather divine and inspirational. Funny how some paint womanhood as the source of chaos, and others as the source of order. In any case, the winsome camaraderie of these two is a joy to behold.
Exactly my thought! In many cultures, the genitals were (and sometimes still are) thought of as something sacred. After all, women are life-bearers. Nothing obscene about that. I believe, the idea of making these things something to be embarrassed or joked about came much later in time. Just look at how many female figurines from ancient times are found, which are carved as either very voluptuous (perhaps as if pregnant) or displaying their genitals (and the same goes for male carvings/paintings). Perhaps a word describing this female part right at the start of a writing system is symbolic of how everything begins: with birth.
6:43 Could that rune as used in OE be compared to, roughly, the abbreviation line, which is sometimes a nasal line, sometimes something completely different "piecing together" first and last letter of a word?
Vikings were well aware of the buffalo - at least the European buffalo aka the European bison or the wisent. The Old Norse word for it is visundr. Bison lived in southern Scandinavia, at least, back in prehistoric times.
Re:The idea of the entire futhark written out on medallions or stones. What is the likelihood that the order of the runes lays out an important story of some sort? Maybe like a nursery rhyme, but with more depth.
I have wondered if the order was a kind of acrostic mnemonic. Not that the futhark is itself a phrase, but that they are initials signifying words, for some poem or something (that was forgotten by the time of the later rune poems). It may have been easier for the transmitters of the runes (be they early germanic people or celtic intermediaries) to remember that than the seemingly arbitrary order the greeks used.
The Japanese famously had a pangram ("いろはにほへと...") which they used as their collation order for the _kana_ syllabaries, from its composition in the 800s through (I think) World War II or just before, when they replaced it with the current, more systematic order.
Cool, I didn't know exactly that Elementa just meant Alphabet. But it brought my thoughts to the Elementa Runica, the medieval rune compilation by Johannes Bureus.
It more broadly means the basic components of anything, in this case of the written word. But like Luke mentions, it may be the basic components of nature (the four elements of classical theory or the Epicurean view of atoms), or the basic theorems of geometry (Euclid's _Elements_ has this sense).
They do seem to have similarities to Greek. Is anything known about the runes acting like hieroglyphs in that they represent sounds as well as concepts and you have to take their usage in their placement within the texts?
There are instances of runes being used conceptually, even in early Latin-script texts from Scandinavia. For example, the Younger Fuþark M rune (ON maðr = EN man) is used to mean "man" 43 times in Hávamál. Another semi-conceptual usage is the Old English rune poem, which is composed of riddles describing the runes' namesakes (e.g. "it's sharp, it's evil to touch, don't sit on it" = thorn = Þ) rather than having the names written out.
7:43 An argument for Othinn actually being an immigrant ... like, when he is supposed to have lived (as visitor to Uppsala region), the Rhaetic alphabet was still in use, and it is fairly closeish.
Three Greek letters and two Gothic letters were used solely for numbers. The Greek letters represented sounds that became obsolete (/w/ dropped out, /kw/ turned into /t/ or /p/ depending on the next vowel, and /ts/ turned into /tt/ or /ss/ depending on dialect). The Gothic letters never had any sound; Wulfila got the idea from the Greeks and used an old form of sampi as a numeral.
Interesting take on the röksten. Makes me think it could've been the 800 a.d. equivalent to a swede today, writing a poem about the war in Ukraine, using what they *think* swedish in the 1600s sounded like. Using f's instead of v's ("af" instead of "av"). Like an english person thinking they'd be intelligible to Henry V of England just by using "thee" and "thou" a lot
With a small change: Hávamál ... nýsta ek niðr nam ek upp rúnar œpandi namn fell ek aptr þaðan ... I investigated down below, I took up the runes. Screaming (the) name, I fell back from there. The name Odin screamed was "Fuþark!", from fuþ- "c*nt" and -ark, cf Dutch and Danish -erik, eg. vieserik "dirty old man" and skiderik "lowlife", since that was written on the staff (= the first staff of the Rune alphabet) placed on the tree. This matches Saxo's description of Odin as a perv. Note that the next two runes on the first staff are shaped as Χ and Ρ, Greek chi and rho, another odd fact. And then Odin, who now 'got' reading and alphabets, made two more runestaffs.
That mention of Greek reminded me of Anglo-Saxon St. Cuthbert's coffin, which features the inscription XPS (ᛉᛈᛋ), a Christogram written in runic. However, the writer was evidently unfamiliar with the Greek alphabet, as he transliterates chi and rho into runic as if they were Latin X and P. I wonder, does that make it a Kspistogram instead?
@@christerromsonlande6502 are you icelandic? I was wondering if it was etymologically related to the modern Norwegian slang "f**te" 😂 but I'm looking for sources where it's used this way in proto-norse/old norse as Dr. Crawford described
I have seen both fot (fuð) and hundsfot (a dog's fuð) used as serious insults in Vordingborg the night between 2nd and 3rd January 1640. The one who used those words got his fatal injury that night, a small wound in the neck from a spear or a halberd, as deep as the outermost link of a finger, from which he died 21st January 1640. It's all recorded in Vordingborg town's thing book 31st August and 14th September 1640 (a very long case with many witnesses). The man who died was Hermann Bartlinch, a German merchant from Lübeck, born 1610. Hermann was armed himself, and he was the one who challenged his initially unarmed opponent with many insults and abusive language. He and his brother, Johann, swore their citizen oath to the mayor and council 23rd January 1632. They were both rogues, often involved in fights with epees or degens (swords). The mayor certainly didn't like him either, because he was trying to evade taxes. 11th April 1636, the mayor outright said to Hermann: "du est en skælm, og du skalt blive en skælm, inden jeg dør". The night between 29th and 30th September 1636, Iver Christensen, secondary writer at Vordingborg castle, lost the outermost link of his little finger in a fight with Hermann, his brother and a guy called Peder Fredrichsen. They beat him up in the street. According to the doctor's (barber's) witness, Iver's clothes got completely torn up and dirty, and he had mud in his face as well. Iver got a hold on Peder's epee and wouldn't let go, so Peder Fredrichsen went berserk with his epee, chopping again and again. Johann (who was also armed) even said to Peder Fredrichsen: for God's sake, don't chop so often. Hermann's bane was Peder Eilersen, son of the mayor in Vordingborg, born ca. 1615, dead before 21st April 1641 (perhaps he got outlawed). The case was about whether Hermann died from the wound or other illness, and thus whether Peder Eilersen should be outlawed or keep his peace. The case was appealed to a higher court (land's thing), but those records haven't survived, so the result is unknown. The mayor, Eiler Jacobsen, died 27th August 1640, in his 80th year, mayor and royal tax collector in Vordingborg since 1601, previously sheriff at Vordingborg castle since 1592. I am a descendant of Peder's half-sister, Karen Eilersdatter, born 1592, dead 24th November 1674. Some of Hermann's insults to Peder Eilersen were: Hvor nu, hvor, dit fot, her ude, vilt du binde bjørne? vil din skælm, hundsfot og tølper slaa en skatteborger? djævlen skal fare i dig! est du en borgmestersøn, da er jeg en skatteborgers søn til Lübeck! havde jeg fat paa dig, jeg skulle hugge dig saa smaa som flintesten! jeg skulle se dit hjerteblod! din bur-flegel, hundsfot, kæltringspak, bedragerpak! enten du har tjent din junker for en skælm eller en ærlig dreng, saa kom her ud til mig, det djævlen skal besætte dine hjerterødder! jeg skal traktere og handle med dig, om du varst ti gange borgmestersøn! estu nogen ærlig karl, da mød mig her paa pladsen! og har du tjent ham for en ærlig karl, da kom her ud, og har du tjent ham for en skælm, saa blive du inde! det der fare djævlen ni gange i dine hjerterødder! skulle jeg være ræd for borgmesters søn i Vordingborg? den letfærdige hundsfot! jeg har tjent en hosbonde for mangt et ørefigen, det du varst end ni gange en borgmestersøn, da agter jeg ikke at være din hundsfot eller nogen andens, men est du en ærlig karl, da mød mig og forsvar dig her!
If you check the transliteration of the Vadstena Futhark before the Grimfrost ad, it has a z in it after p, but then after the ad when they're comparing the two Futharks, the z changes to an m, which I think must be a mistake as there would be two m runes in it otherwise.
I hadn't realized you had a channel! I was just reading your edition of the Poetic Edda. Great edition and fantastic commentary. I've worked thus far in like Middle Welsh and Old/ Middle English, so learning about Norse is definitely on the table for my PhD or an additional MA or something.
I was expecting this video to be about a "secret order" and initiation rites or something of the futhark people. The medallion with the runes could be a tipt'o'the hat to Odin writing runes on that tree he was hung on, maybe it grants "godlike" status to write runes...like Shakespearean actors playing monarchs.
It's start F, U, Th-? F, U, Th.... hmm... Any chance Loki had a say in the order? XD Spanish is still quite close to Latin compare to others. Including the "abecedarium" Cause altho "alfabeto" exist and is acceptable the most common way is "Abecedario" which also is pronounce as you would pronounce the first four letters plus -rio. A(a)B(be)C(ce)dario. but C in latin sounds like K while in spanish if its before a e or i or alone it soulds like an s. Anyway. Good short vid.
The aspect of the alphabet starting so that it spells out a word that refers to the private parts of a woman might definitely be intentional but not for it to be a profanity. In approximately the same time period on the other side of the austmárr in Finland the name of the woman's private part was considered to be a very powerfull word, invoking some mythic powers, today that word is considered to be a curse word that would probably translate into the F word or the C word that refers to the womans reproductive organ but back in the day it had a very different effect when used, it wasn't considered as a profane curse word but a word of (magical)power and might. And as for two iron age societies living very close to each other, even though speaking languages from two different language families, they still did have a considerable amount of interaction, even so that their mythologies have significant similarities so it is highly likely that the alphabet spelling out a word refering to the private parts of a woman is infact intentional but not as a profanity but as some sort of a magical significance, since it probably was not considered a profanity at all before the Christian influence on the cultural ideas of what people started to consider indecent.
Re: discussion around 11:18. Sweet, innocent children! Is one obvious interpretation of this not that, since a man's (and anyone's, really) life goes forth from a woman's private parts, it follows that language should also proceed from a point of natural birth? Not wanting to get into any mystical rubbish here, but one thing which fascinates me about certain ancient languages (e.g. Hebrew) is that letters and numbers have magical value. IN English, Tolkien reminds us, the word for 'story' is 'spell' - a word we're more famiiliar with these days as either an action to create a word (give birth to a word?) or 'a formula for power over men' (On Fairy Stories, Tolkien c.1945). Interesting that you associate female bits with obscenity though ;p Update: 12:39-ish youo mention is this modern. Like, 19th centuryish? I rest my case.
These language channel collabs are bridging fandoms that never would have expected to see a crossover.
And it totally works at so many levels simoultaneously!
I’m a little disappointed, I thought that this was going to be a tongue in cheek launch of a new mystical group known as “The Order of the Futhark.”
But this is good too! 😂
Same!
Same!😂😂😂
Damn, what do I do with this robe now
Yes, surely this must be the name of Jackson's super secret cult?
Or possibly the name of his band, with hit singles such as Fljóð? 🤔
wait you're telling me that "Elder Futhark" is like saying "Elder Qwerty"? I love history
Professor Libermann is my Old Norse professor - can confirm his humor is pretty blue and he is wicked smart! Hello from Minnesota!
My favorite part about the Internet is that real professionals in their field teach things for free. Thanks for the free knowledge, Dr. Crawford!
This Luke Ranieri collab is a great series!! I have been watching with interest and learning much from both of you. I was required to have 2 years of Latin in high school and i had 2 years of Spanish in college- one year Cuban Spanish and 1 year Spanish Castillian Spanish.. My Mother's Mother, My Mother and My Mother's Sister majored in Latin in college and my Grandmother Mother's Mother majored in Latin and Greek and she knew it until the day she died! My older brother and my sister took years of Latin in high school. My brother and my Father learned German.
who?
@@micheleguglielmana2568 Who? Sorry, which who are you asking about? Luke Ranieri? That is who is standing next to Dr Crawford. Luke Ranieri is an expert in Latin and Ancient Greek.
That's a lineage to be proud of! Damn! .... and here's me all puffed up because because one great-grandmother attended a totally illegal Flying School when she was a young girl in Warsaw.
@@Ameslan1 no I meant to do the gag "who asked" but now four days have passed.
It's so sad, sorry bro.
@@ak5659 Yes I just wanted to inform Luke Ranieri how much Latin and ancient Greek was learned in my family as well as some other modern languages learned :) Not boasting here.
I hope this collabs keep going indefinitely
Absolutely loving these videos with Luke! Your content is always fantastic, I just got my money situation figured out and am glad to say I’m now a patron. Can’t wait to see more excellent content in the future!
This channel is such a treasure of knowledge!
The cyrilic is called "azbuka", from "az" and "buki", the names of the first two letters. They literally mean "I, me" and "book". The name of the alphabet came organically, the students were ask to learn the "az" and the "buki", hence the name.
I have to say, that when I first saw the title, and knowing Jackson's sense of humor, I thought he was going to induct Luke into "The Order of the Futhark".
Also, in Hebrew the lettering system is called the “Aleph-Bet” I think …
So, when two linguists get together and don’t get along, what does that look like?
“There’s NO WAY the Roman alphabet is descended through Etruscan!”
“Leave this house.”
These colabs are being very productive. More please
Really loving the Jackson-Luke double-act in these videos :D
The use of writing the entire alphabet sequence on objects is also typically found in pre-roman Italy. Sometimes, instead of writing single letters, they wrote all the possibile combinations of consonants and vowels (like KA KE KI KO KU and so on).
Love the collabs!!!
13:48 "elementa" in the metaphoric sense was not just used about "the four elements" but in fact also about "atoms" (of Epicure).
This is a thing that Karl Marx missed in his thesis, he argued against Colossians 2:8 warning against Epicureans as thitherto traditionally taught, because precisely he thought "elementa" was such a good fit for the four elements. But the word also refers to atoms in Epicure's sense, and the metaphor is more transparent there, since elementa in the one sense make up words and elementa (atoms) in the other sense make up bodies.
I can absolutely see the written form being worn as adornments as a symbolization of power, and a certain degree of superiority.
Not just that, but i think there's a certain respect to it, in that it empowers people to leave their spoken word behind for others to witness long after they're gone.
In a lot of ways, the ability to read and write changes the dynamics of a civilization entirely, and in an age where literacy isn't something that you 'just learned' as it is today, i can see people decorating adornments with this symbol of power, of prosperity, of legacy.
Greatest American Hero reference shoutout to Luke! Lols, and thanks, guys. You are quite the pair. Hugs
Ive read that, in Swedish, fitta originally meant wet meadow, or 'fertile ground'. The fact that the ruines begin with this was perhaps intented to mean that writing was a seed that was to be spread in order to grow culture, spirituality or something, maybe. Ok, probably not.
I would imagine they called it elementa because letters are the elements that words are made from.
That was a good handshake.
It's like identifying keyboards... like QWERTY
Maybe futha was used since that signifies birth/conception, so the alphabet also begins with that. Needn't be a lewd reason for it.
Jackson's face at 15:02 is priceless. He looks like he's receiving an award!
Maybe futha got that meaning because it's how everyone enters life. It's the beginning of everyone, after all.
That was totally my firsth thought about ths right away, too.
Good discussion.
Now I feel much more sophisticated on the rare occasions I swear using the Swedish version of the old futha. 🤬
I remember a thing called "elementarz" in Polish - a book for children to learn alphabet. I'm curious if this is related to the discussion.
It's interesting because in Slavic languages we also often use some form of the word "elementarno" (elementary) to say that something is very basic and easy. I wonder if that might be the reason to call the alphabet that way.
I rememben seeing a book like that at a (great?)grandparents' house when I was a kid. But at that time I was beyond that and reading the magenta "Mowimy po Polku" so I was uninterested because I was beyond Elementarz. Now I look back and remember the really old fonts & handwriting examples and wish I'd grabbed it. But I was smart enough to grab my grandfather's 1904 Esperanto textbook :-)
Love this collab!
I've been living in Vadstena for ten years. Funny that I got to hear about the Vadstena bracteate from an American.
Brilliant! Cool to see where all this originates.
Thanks!
For a second, I totally thought “Order of the Futhark” was a new Patreon support tier lol
Nice scenery boys.
Loving this collaboration!
Saw your title and was excited to be hearing about some new knightly association centered upon interest in proto/old norse. A little disappointed. I would definitely joined the Patreon for something like that.
we still call the alphabet in czech "abeceda". it is traditional, one attested use comes from a satiric song from early 15cc (begining of hussite revolution) as a denotation to archbishop's (zbyněk zajíc z hazmburka) analphabetism/illiteracy: zbyněk biskup abeceda spálil knihy, a nevěda, co je v nich napsáno... (bishop sbygneus the alphabet, burned the books, and not knowing their content... ).
good vid, i like yr collabs!
Perhaps the "futha" might not have been considered obscene or profane at all, as Luca suggests, but rather divine and inspirational. Funny how some paint womanhood as the source of chaos, and others as the source of order. In any case, the winsome camaraderie of these two is a joy to behold.
Exactly my thought! In many cultures, the genitals were (and sometimes still are) thought of as something sacred. After all, women are life-bearers. Nothing obscene about that. I believe, the idea of making these things something to be embarrassed or joked about came much later in time. Just look at how many female figurines from ancient times are found, which are carved as either very voluptuous (perhaps as if pregnant) or displaying their genitals (and the same goes for male carvings/paintings). Perhaps a word describing this female part right at the start of a writing system is symbolic of how everything begins: with birth.
Is there any difference between Wotán and Odin?
a meeting of the pantheons~
6:43 Could that rune as used in OE be compared to, roughly, the abbreviation line, which is sometimes a nasal line, sometimes something completely different "piecing together" first and last letter of a word?
How would the word moon(Måne) be in the original language? What runes should be used or is there a special rune to represent the moon?
Is it possible that the Fä rune at the beginning is mimicking the start of the Phoenician alphabet with a symbol for an ox head?🤔
Every time I watch the opening of this channel I wonder what would have happened if the Vikings had met the Buffalo...
... I mean Vikings mounted on Buffalo... Call me, any-video-company-ever.
Vikings were well aware of the buffalo - at least the European buffalo aka the European bison or the wisent. The Old Norse word for it is visundr. Bison lived in southern Scandinavia, at least, back in prehistoric times.
@@robinviden9148 :) Ah, I forgot about that one... :) Well, that'll teach me to be clever in the youtube comments!
Is there any resources to learn Old German or the equivalent of German to old nores?
I love this!!!!
fantastic video once again...I have so many thoughts and theories, but it would be from a layman's point of view
Re:The idea of the entire futhark written out on medallions or stones. What is the likelihood that the order of the runes lays out an important story of some sort? Maybe like a nursery rhyme, but with more depth.
Would people in the Vendel period have used Elder or Younger Futhark?
I have wondered if the order was a kind of acrostic mnemonic.
Not that the futhark is itself a phrase, but that they are initials signifying words, for some poem or something (that was forgotten by the time of the later rune poems). It may have been easier for the transmitters of the runes (be they early germanic people or celtic intermediaries) to remember that than the seemingly arbitrary order the greeks used.
The Japanese famously had a pangram ("いろはにほへと...") which they used as their collation order for the _kana_ syllabaries, from its composition in the 800s through (I think) World War II or just before, when they replaced it with the current, more systematic order.
Cool, I didn't know exactly that Elementa just meant Alphabet. But it brought my thoughts to the Elementa Runica, the medieval rune compilation by Johannes Bureus.
It more broadly means the basic components of anything, in this case of the written word. But like Luke mentions, it may be the basic components of nature (the four elements of classical theory or the Epicurean view of atoms), or the basic theorems of geometry (Euclid's _Elements_ has this sense).
The Order of the Elder Futhark. It sound like some kind of organisation, maybe ancient or sinister, or maybe very prestigeous,.
They do seem to have similarities to Greek. Is anything known about the runes acting like hieroglyphs in that they represent sounds as well as concepts and you have to take their usage in their placement within the texts?
There are instances of runes being used conceptually, even in early Latin-script texts from Scandinavia. For example, the Younger Fuþark M rune (ON maðr = EN man) is used to mean "man" 43 times in Hávamál.
Another semi-conceptual usage is the Old English rune poem, which is composed of riddles describing the runes' namesakes (e.g. "it's sharp, it's evil to touch, don't sit on it" = thorn = Þ) rather than having the names written out.
@@williamramsey9140 😊 thank you
7:43 An argument for Othinn actually being an immigrant ... like, when he is supposed to have lived (as visitor to Uppsala region), the Rhaetic alphabet was still in use, and it is fairly closeish.
Is the Vadstena brakteat on display somewhere today?
I should have googled before I asked. It was stolen a century ago. The Motala bracteate though, is in The Swedish History Museum in Stockholm
Did they use the runes for nummerical values like the Greeks did for their letters? That should give the definite order, shouldn't it?
Three Greek letters and two Gothic letters were used solely for numbers. The Greek letters represented sounds that became obsolete (/w/ dropped out, /kw/ turned into /t/ or /p/ depending on the next vowel, and /ts/ turned into /tt/ or /ss/ depending on dialect). The Gothic letters never had any sound; Wulfila got the idea from the Greeks and used an old form of sampi as a numeral.
Interesting take on the röksten. Makes me think it could've been the 800 a.d. equivalent to a swede today, writing a poem about the war in Ukraine, using what they *think* swedish in the 1600s sounded like. Using f's instead of v's ("af" instead of "av"). Like an english person thinking they'd be intelligible to Henry V of England just by using "thee" and "thou" a lot
With a small change:
Hávamál
...
nýsta ek niðr
nam ek upp rúnar
œpandi namn
fell ek aptr þaðan
...
I investigated down below,
I took up the runes.
Screaming (the) name,
I fell back from there.
The name Odin screamed was "Fuþark!", from fuþ- "c*nt" and -ark, cf Dutch and Danish -erik, eg. vieserik "dirty old man" and skiderik "lowlife", since that was written on the staff (= the first staff of the Rune alphabet) placed on the tree. This matches Saxo's description of Odin as a perv.
Note that the next two runes on the first staff are shaped as Χ and Ρ, Greek chi and rho, another odd fact.
And then Odin, who now 'got' reading and alphabets, made two more runestaffs.
That mention of Greek reminded me of Anglo-Saxon St. Cuthbert's coffin, which features the inscription XPS (ᛉᛈᛋ), a Christogram written in runic. However, the writer was evidently unfamiliar with the Greek alphabet, as he transliterates chi and rho into runic as if they were Latin X and P.
I wonder, does that make it a Kspistogram instead?
Does anyone know the specific instances in which "fuda" is used to reference female anatomy? If it's on carvings, which ones?
It's used that way today (but not by me of course!)
@@christerromsonlande6502 are you icelandic? I was wondering if it was etymologically related to the modern Norwegian slang "f**te" 😂 but I'm looking for sources where it's used this way in proto-norse/old norse as Dr. Crawford described
@@JR-bi9fk No, I'm Swedish. And I was referring to etymologically same modern Swedish word as the modern Norwegian.
@@christerromsonlande6502 It's cognate with the german "f*tze" so chances are it's older than where it's first attested.
I have seen both fot (fuð) and hundsfot (a dog's fuð) used as serious insults in Vordingborg the night between 2nd and 3rd January 1640. The one who used those words got his fatal injury that night, a small wound in the neck from a spear or a halberd, as deep as the outermost link of a finger, from which he died 21st January 1640. It's all recorded in Vordingborg town's thing book 31st August and 14th September 1640 (a very long case with many witnesses). The man who died was Hermann Bartlinch, a German merchant from Lübeck, born 1610. Hermann was armed himself, and he was the one who challenged his initially unarmed opponent with many insults and abusive language. He and his brother, Johann, swore their citizen oath to the mayor and council 23rd January 1632. They were both rogues, often involved in fights with epees or degens (swords). The mayor certainly didn't like him either, because he was trying to evade taxes. 11th April 1636, the mayor outright said to Hermann: "du est en skælm, og du skalt blive en skælm, inden jeg dør".
The night between 29th and 30th September 1636, Iver Christensen, secondary writer at Vordingborg castle, lost the outermost link of his little finger in a fight with Hermann, his brother and a guy called Peder Fredrichsen. They beat him up in the street. According to the doctor's (barber's) witness, Iver's clothes got completely torn up and dirty, and he had mud in his face as well. Iver got a hold on Peder's epee and wouldn't let go, so Peder Fredrichsen went berserk with his epee, chopping again and again. Johann (who was also armed) even said to Peder Fredrichsen: for God's sake, don't chop so often.
Hermann's bane was Peder Eilersen, son of the mayor in Vordingborg, born ca. 1615, dead before 21st April 1641 (perhaps he got outlawed). The case was about whether Hermann died from the wound or other illness, and thus whether Peder Eilersen should be outlawed or keep his peace. The case was appealed to a higher court (land's thing), but those records haven't survived, so the result is unknown. The mayor, Eiler Jacobsen, died 27th August 1640, in his 80th year, mayor and royal tax collector in Vordingborg since 1601, previously sheriff at Vordingborg castle since 1592. I am a descendant of Peder's half-sister, Karen Eilersdatter, born 1592, dead 24th November 1674.
Some of Hermann's insults to Peder Eilersen were:
Hvor nu, hvor, dit fot, her ude, vilt du binde bjørne? vil din skælm, hundsfot og tølper slaa en skatteborger? djævlen skal fare i dig! est du en borgmestersøn, da er jeg en skatteborgers søn til Lübeck! havde jeg fat paa dig, jeg skulle hugge dig saa smaa som flintesten! jeg skulle se dit hjerteblod! din bur-flegel, hundsfot, kæltringspak, bedragerpak! enten du har tjent din junker for en skælm eller en ærlig dreng, saa kom her ud til mig, det djævlen skal besætte dine hjerterødder! jeg skal traktere og handle med dig, om du varst ti gange borgmestersøn! estu nogen ærlig karl, da mød mig her paa pladsen! og har du tjent ham for en ærlig karl, da kom her ud, og har du tjent ham for en skælm, saa blive du inde! det der fare djævlen ni gange i dine hjerterødder! skulle jeg være ræd for borgmesters søn i Vordingborg? den letfærdige hundsfot! jeg har tjent en hosbonde for mangt et ørefigen, det du varst end ni gange en borgmestersøn, da agter jeg ikke at være din hundsfot eller nogen andens, men est du en ærlig karl, da mød mig og forsvar dig her!
Also the Kylver stone had a Z, which the other did not.
If you check the transliteration of the Vadstena Futhark before the Grimfrost ad, it has a z in it after p, but then after the ad when they're comparing the two Futharks, the z changes to an m, which I think must be a mistake as there would be two m runes in it otherwise.
Maybe displaying the alphabet was their idea of efficiently transmitting the written language for people to learn
I hadn't realized you had a channel! I was just reading your edition of the Poetic Edda. Great edition and fantastic commentary. I've worked thus far in like Middle Welsh and Old/ Middle English, so learning about Norse is definitely on the table for my PhD or an additional MA or something.
Rocky Mountain National Park.
Fun!
knowing your futhark is like knowing your ABC's
I was expecting this video to be about a "secret order" and initiation rites or something of the futhark people.
The medallion with the runes could be a tipt'o'the hat to Odin writing runes on that tree he was hung on, maybe it grants "godlike" status to write runes...like Shakespearean actors playing monarchs.
I just don't know what to say to this.
For some reason I thought this video waa about some knightly organization called "The Order of the Elder Futhark" 🤣
I know this isn't the point and forgive my crudeness, but damn I'm turned on.
Futhorch?
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It's start F, U, Th-? F, U, Th.... hmm... Any chance Loki had a say in the order? XD
Spanish is still quite close to Latin compare to others. Including the "abecedarium" Cause altho "alfabeto" exist and is acceptable the most common way is "Abecedario" which also is pronounce as you would pronounce the first four letters plus -rio. A(a)B(be)C(ce)dario. but C in latin sounds like K while in spanish if its before a e or i or alone it soulds like an s.
Anyway. Good short vid.
I think there is a typo in your writing the Vadstena bracteate, there are two 'm's and the first should be a z.
Áustmarr*
The aspect of the alphabet starting so that it spells out a word that refers to the private parts of a woman might definitely be intentional but not for it to be a profanity. In approximately the same time period on the other side of the austmárr in Finland the name of the woman's private part was considered to be a very powerfull word, invoking some mythic powers, today that word is considered to be a curse word that would probably translate into the F word or the C word that refers to the womans reproductive organ but back in the day it had a very different effect when used, it wasn't considered as a profane curse word but a word of (magical)power and might. And as for two iron age societies living very close to each other, even though speaking languages from two different language families, they still did have a considerable amount of interaction, even so that their mythologies have significant similarities so it is highly likely that the alphabet spelling out a word refering to the private parts of a woman is infact intentional but not as a profanity but as some sort of a magical significance, since it probably was not considered a profanity at all before the Christian influence on the cultural ideas of what people started to consider indecent.
Linguistic knowledge is definitely better when disseminated by dudes in cowboy hats.
Hugely uninportant correction, Vadstena is pronounsed ”vasstena”
Re: discussion around 11:18. Sweet, innocent children! Is one obvious interpretation of this not that, since a man's (and anyone's, really) life goes forth from a woman's private parts, it follows that language should also proceed from a point of natural birth? Not wanting to get into any mystical rubbish here, but one thing which fascinates me about certain ancient languages (e.g. Hebrew) is that letters and numbers have magical value. IN English, Tolkien reminds us, the word for 'story' is 'spell' - a word we're more famiiliar with these days as either an action to create a word (give birth to a word?) or 'a formula for power over men' (On Fairy Stories, Tolkien c.1945). Interesting that you associate female bits with obscenity though ;p
Update: 12:39-ish youo mention is this modern. Like, 19th centuryish? I rest my case.
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