I knew I had saved a newspaper clipping about some runes recently
found in Holland somewhere. I just looked in my papers, in case it
might be relevant to the discussion here. Well, maybe it is.
The newspaper article concerns a runic inscription found in Bergakker
(near Tiel, i.e. right on limes of the Rhine) on a silver sword
sheath, probably dating from the 4th/5th century AD. The inscription
contains one Runic letter which is otherwise unknown, looking like a v
inside a V (approximately \\//). The infamous "s"-rune is also
written double (like:
\\
//
\\
)
The inscription reads (using V for the mysterious rune):
haTVTV{wa}s:ann:kVsjam:
:logVns:\/\/\
{wa} is a sign that looks like a <w> and an <a> combined
|\
|\>
|/
|
|
The article says that the runologist Tineke Looijenga (Groningen)
thinks the rune should be assigned the value <e>, making the first
word a name ending in -thewas (servant), as known from the Danish Old
Runic inscriptions. (She further thinks the rest of the inscription
is written in macarronic Latin: <Hathethewas Ann. kesjam logens>, "Of
Hathethewa(z) Annius, this shining spear [gesiam lucentem ??]", which
makes no sense: one would expect Latin acc. and nom. forms not to be
mixed, and, as is explained in the article, the <gesia> word is
post-i-umlaut Germanic, so we would expect <kasjam>).
According to the article, other (nameless) runologists think that the
sign is simply a turned <u>-rune, so that the inscription would read:
hathuthuwas ann kusjam loguns (no translation suggested).
Funnily enough, if we substitute <iu> for the funny rune (not that it
looks much like the standard shape of the 13th rune, which is:
|\
|
\|
), we get back the connection with <thewaz> "servant" (Goth. <thius>):
hathiuthiuwas ann kiusjam logiuns.
<Kiusjam> too, would seem to make sense (something to do with
"choose"), but my Ur-Germanic is not good enough to know out of hand
what to make of <hathiu->, <ann> or <logiuns>, or if <kiusjam> can
really be "we choose" or not. Someone?
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...