I am hunting for Old Norse words surrounding the beads the
Viking-era folks liked to wear. Questions are clearly
labeled towards the end but first the current research.
Archaeologically we can find beads of glass, amber, jet,
carnelian, rock crystal (quartz), limestone, and amethyst.
Ideally then I would like each of the these words (raw
material) and the word for a bead made of them.
Obvious words include
-tala (bead)
-tölur (beads)
gler (glass)
giving us
glertala (glass bead) and glertölur (glass beads)
Which is a great start. Then it gets tricky.
Zeoga and Cleasby combine to provide the following concepts
glersteinar (literally glass-stone) assigned to agate (rock
family for carnelian)
sólartár (sun tears) assigned to amber
hrafntinna assigned to obsidian (perhaps applicable to jet
which I don't think was found in iceland)
and hrím which seems to wind up translated as crystal
(from frost I assume) and foam (from rime I assume).
Now the questions
1. How would one construct a "three part" word? for an
agate bead for example we would be looking at the
construction glass-stone-bead glersteintala ? or would you
say "bead of glass-stone" (tala til glersteinar)?
2. Is anyone aware of better matches for carnelian?
3. Does anyone know the words for amethyst, limestone, jet,
or quartz (perhaps hrímsteinar)?
As always any surrounding lectures are most welcome!