Hej Haukur,
I wrote:
>>Nothing, which is why I don't recommend the vast majority of
>>Thorsson's books - however, I have to agree with the positive
>>assessment of *half* of _Runelore_. The first portion, "Historical
>>Lore," is excellent, and my only disagreements are a few spots where
>>I think he presents theory as fact.
you replied:
>There we go! I haven't seen the book but I trust
>Selvarv on this. So here we have the recommended
>popular book on runes. Go to the next book store;
>find "Runelore"; tear it apart in the middle, go
>to the counter and ask to buy the first half :þ :)
Heh - I don't know if I'd give that much unequivocal support for my
opinion, but I also remembered that I've received strong
recommendation for his PhD thesis _Runes and Magic_, as Stephen
Flowers, from folks whose opinion I trust. Apparently it's as
well-documented and supported as a doctoral thesis generally should
be.
However, if you're well-read in psychology and esoterica in general,
the latter half of _Runelore_ does have plenty of amusement value -
you can play "spot the undocumented sources". I particularly liked
Jung's map of the soul with a name-replacement of "lík", "hamr",
"óðr", "önd", "hugr", "minni", sál" and "fylgja" in place of body,
anima, sensation, emotion, intellect, consciousness, subconsciousness
and collective subconsciousness.
>>For that matter, the "common" names used for the runes (fehu, uruz,
>>etc) are rather poor Proto-Germanic reconstructions, and I don't even
>>see the point for them when the poems give actual names: the
>>Anglo-Saxon poem gives names for 29 runes in their set and the
>>Norwegian and Icelandic poems give names for the 16 runes in the
>>younger set. Since all 24 elder runes are also part of the
>>Anglo-Saxon version, it doesn't take much effort to simply translate
>>the other 8 eight into Old Norse (except peorð, for which I can't
>>decent evidence regarding what it should be, although I have a loopy
>>theory).
>I'd be interested in hearing the loopy theory :)
Alright, here goes - I think the Old Norse cognate of peorð is borð.
The information we have on the fourteenth rune is only the
Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem, and a line of that stanza is missing - the Jim
Paul translation is:
In the beerhall
the [dice cup] clatters.
The lucky ones laugh
[...]
He translates peorð as "dice cup", but acknowledges that it's also
commonly suggested as "chess piece". The idea of a dice cup is that
the rune is on its side, and should be rotated 90° from this:
|\/
|
|/\
to this:
\ /
/___\
However, if it's rotated 90° the other way, it is:
____
\ /
/ \
Which appears to me as the bent legs of two people facing each other
with a table between them, maybe even a symbolic representation of
the picture on the right:
http://www.vikinganswerlady.org/graphics/fig2.gif
Before chess became popular in Europe, the big game was tafl
(pronounced the way you'd expect if it were spelled "tabl"). I won't
go into the rather elaborate history of the game, but just give a
couple of pretty good links:
http://user.tninet.se/~jgd996c/hnefatafl/hnefatafl.html
http://www.vikinganswerlady.org/games.htm
What's relevant is that the Germanic languages vary on how to treat
cognates of "table" and "board" - some have similar meanings as in
English, and in some cases the meanings are switched. For example,
in German "Bord" is a shelf or ledge, "Tabelle" is a chart, "Tablett"
is a tray-table and "Tafel" is a slab or blackboard. In addition to
all of these, there's also the board in question here, a board-game,
which used to be called "playing tables". At first, this just
refered to tafl, or hnefatafl, but then chess, backgammon and dozens
of other board games were introduced to Europe, most of which have
been forgotten. In Scandinavia, each was given a name of
(stem)-tafl, such as chess being "skáktafl".
Now, there is some linguistic problem with the name of this rune
being related to borð, but not the problem some might expect. The
b-p phonetic shift is common enough in old Germanic languages, and
there appears to have been a period when many "p" sounds were shifted
to "b", especially in Norse languages. No, the problem is with the
"eo", because no definite cognate of "board" has a diphthong like
that in it. I know the Anglo-Saxons had too much fun throwing
diphthongs into every word they could, but I don't even see a hint of
one in "board" - it's always just a straight"o" sound - no "bórd" or
"börd" or "børd" to my knowledge in any Germanic language - although
I don't have any Dutch language dictionaries here...
Of course, no matter how much this theory of mine is implausible,
it's nothing compared the typical version of this rune: *perthro,
apparently related to wyrd and ørlög. Ummm... pwyrd?! what happened
to the starting phonetic value? You know, the one the character is
supposed to represent? A phonetic shift is certainly possible, but
dropping the sound entirely? Plus there's opening up the can of
worms that the Old Norse for wyrd, "urðr", is also the name of a norn
and actually just the participle of "vera". Why have a rune for one
norn/derivation of "to be", but not another like "Skuld"? ;->
Anyhow, I like my theory and think it looks pretty, but there's
really no evidence and that vowel shift is a bit of a problem - but
it's probably at least as functional as the usual description of the
rune.
>I see your point on not using the reconstructed names;
>though even real scholars do - and often without the
>asterisk.
I've noticed, but mostly I find it amusing that with Anglo-Saxon
names of all of the Elder Fúþórk, and Old Norse names for at least
23, it should be perfectly effective to use the actual names, not
silly words like *hagalaz.
-Selv
--
Selvårv Stigård
selvarv@...
Administrator, RagnarökR.com web site and email distribution
"The problem is not that a particular class is unfit to rule.
The problem is that every class is unfit to rule." -Lord Acton