Hej Haukur,

I wrote:

>>Alright, here goes - I think the Old Norse cognate of peorð is borð.

you replied:

>An interesting theory - but I didn't quite gather how you envisioned
>the development of the word. Did you conceive of 'peorð' as a borrowing
>from an Old Norse word (*bjórð?) thus explaining the 'ð'?

Well, I was thinking something more like a common descent from a
Proto-Norse word, like *pjorð, simply because it's the p-rune, but
the 'ð' already fits, and the 'p' could easily shift to a 'b' -
especially given the relative lack of 'p' words in Old Norse. I just
can't figure out how the same vowel sound, like a *jo or *jó could
easily shift to the 'eo' in peorð in one case and borð in another.

The basic idea was simply that the only two ways I've seen anyone
associate an Anglo-Saxon "peorð" with any kind of game or playing
device are either from wyrd/urðr, which completely lacks the
beginning 'p', or from apfel/epli/apple, which completely lacks the
'rð' ending. Besides, both of those concepts then involve some
rather silly esoteric leaps of logic to make the association.

I'm thinking that the Old Norse cognate of "peorð" is "borð", but
that the closest translation of the concept is "tafl". Every
Germanic language treats their cognates of "table" and "board" a
little differently, and I think that's how the name for this rune
ended up being so confusing (that, and that the only name we have for
this rune is the Anglo-Saxon).

However, the main reason why this has been remaining a loopy theory
and hasn't evolved into any kind of scholarly theory, is that I
haven't studied Proto-Norse enough to feel comfortable making
statements towards a different understanding of the runes from that
period. Of course, that doesn't seem to be stopping anyone else from
writing books about the elder fúþórk, but...

>>http://user.tninet.se/~jgd996c/hnefatafl/hnefatafl.html

>I got lost for an hour reading this.

Yeah, as did I when I first came across it - doesn't hurt that the
author documents his sources, either.

-Selv

--
Selvårv Stigård
selvarv@...
Administrator, RagnarökR.com web site and email distribution
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