> Thank you for the exercise, Haukur. Great job.

Thank you, in turn, for your interest and contribution.

> You are correct but I feel it is semantic. The words are directly related.
> I chose to translate as 'write' because it's a closer modern root word and
> the meaning is more accurate. I don't know of a instance of the word 'rista'
> being used to mean carving anything other than runes (like carving a statue
> or a turkey), but I am probably mistaken.

True. The English word 'carve' has much wider application than the Old Norse
"rísta". Let's settle on 'cut' to translate "rísta".

> > I inquired back what time and place the runes should be from and got
> > "Norway, mid-8th century". Unfortunately there are very few inscriptions
> > preserved from that time. The closest long inscriptions are probably
> > the Norwegian Eggjum slab, around 700, and the Swedish Rök and Sparlösa
> > stones from around 800. Both Eggjum and Sparlösa use the shape that later
> > was used for 'hagall' to represent 'a'.
>
> That I recognized.
>
> > All three inscriptions use some
> > runes from the older futhark.
>
> From my POV Eggjum is an Elder inscription. The only rune changed is
> 'oss/ansR'.:

Hmm. The 'kaun' rune is young as well, isn't it?

http://home.no.net/ekerilar//no-rune-eggja.jpg

> The Eggja Rune Stone (656 Kb)
>
> I can't find any Elder runes on Sparlosa. Where are they?:

Hmm... I thought there was an old H there somewhere but that
doesn't seem to be so. But the form of the 'a' rune suggests
that if there was an 'h' rune it would be in the old form. :p :)

>> Lazarus - the practice of separating words with dots or other markings was
>> not employed at this early time.

> Not to argue too much but:
> The Vadstena bracteate c.450ce-550ce uses colons as punctuation at the end
> of each aett.
> The Kalleby formulae uses a single dot to separate two phrases/words
> c.400ce-550ce.
> The Roes Stone uses the triple colon from c.750ce.
> The Garbolle box uses a cryptic five dot punctuation mark from c.400ce.
>
> There are more but then I seem like a jerk. I'm just pointing out that
> punctuation was in use before 800ce in a general sense. Now, was it used in
> the region where the inscription was supposed to have taken place in? That
> is another story and one I can't say.

*Goof* 'tis true I greatly overstated the case. It is certainly correct, however,
that punctuation was not as widely employed in the 8th century as it was later on.
Taking Eggjum as my primary model I decided to omit it.

> I really enjoyed this.
>
> BTW - here is the awesome site where the runestones pics I posted are from:
> http://home.no.net/ekerilar/

Very useful indeed!

Kveðja,
Haukur

--
Civil war there cannot be between States held together by their volition only.
-- Jefferson Davis, "Second Inaugural Address"