Re: futhark

Schleiman’s “discovery” of the tomb of Agamemnon was more remarkable than his “discovery” of Troy .

Many explorers had dug in Mycenae without success. When Schleiman got to Mycenae , he asked

a local where he should start looking. The local took him to the exact spot, saying everyone here

knows where Agamemnon was buried but you’re the first to ask. Schleiman dug down and found

a rich tomb. Whether it was Agamemnon or not, he unearthed the treasures of a great king of

4500 years ago, as some have dated it. And all he had to do was ask.

Scott Catledge

Professor Emeritus

From: norse_course@yahoogroups.com [mailto: norse_course@yahoogroups.com ] On Behalf Of warcharger2000
Sent: Sunday, April 12, 2009 6:30 PM
To: norse_course@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [norse_course] Re: futhark

haven't been able to get to the computer; but i've been wanting to post on this topic. i've found that the whole v,w runes to be a interesting study. I have always wonder way in the elder futhark it is paired with the u... ?

Hail to you all
Uruzz Tyrburr

--- In norse_course@ yahoogroups. com, asvardhrafn@ ... wrote:

>
> To answer yes that was what from your account seemed to be conveyed thanks

for the clarification. As to documentation this is the same argument used against continuity of certain Celtic elements as well. Ie. Both were societies that the lore was all oral and the modern assumption is that if there isn't written record it can't have occurred this is also the divide between physical and linguistic anthropology. But this is the kind of thinking that caused Heinrich Schleiman to dig through the real Troy because was looking for the Troy written of by Homer who was likely not on hand for the battle in the first place. The fact the profs statement mention the problem of origins of the runes he would likely say there is no way to prove me wrong or right if one goes by the recorded documents.

>
> Asvard
> Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Eyja Bassadottir <eyja.gellir@ ...>
>
> Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 20:34:17
> To: <norse_course@ yahoogroups. com>
> Subject: Re: [norse_course] Re: futhark
>
>
> I'm not entirely clear: are you saying that in my retelling of Liberman's
> lecture that he meant that the runes were not understood for their

phonetic

> value? If so, I did not mean to convey that. I don't remember Liberman
> remarking, nor concluded from what I heard, that they did not understand

the

> phonetic values of the runes, just that they were not bound to how we

would

> use them (purely for the phonetic value and nothing else).
>
> "...a magical symbol also incorporating names"
> >
>
> I'm a little confused here as well. Are you referring to the names of the
> runes (' ur ',

etc.?) As I remember from the lecture, Liberman mentioned that

> the names used for the runes (' ur ',

etc.) are only documentable until

> post-Viking Age usage, and so he could not remark upon them or conclude

when

> the names were developed. He also mentioned that it's difficult to deduce

> when* runes began to be used for magic, since the only documents that

allude

> to this were produced in the 13th c. (the sagas) about 1100 or 1200 years
> after they were first created. It could be that the magical use for the
> runes did not develop for some time.
>
>
> ~Eyja
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 8:15 PM, <asvardhrafn@ ...> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > I would disagree with the esteemed professor in that the futhark's

well

> > developed use as a magical symbol also incorporating names that use

the

> > sounds that he believe that the so called primitive Germanics only

later

> > fully understood the use of. I don't dispute thay they likely aquired

the

> > idea of writting from some one else. I would more likely point to

western

> > use of Chinese pictograms for their symbology rather than for their

use in

> > the construction of comound words. I fully understand the pictogram

mwen

> > (door) has linguistic uses like being the basis for the word

lightning but

> > would be more likely paint it by my door if I was into Taoism as a

nod to

> > the guardian spirits without needing to comprehend its full usage.
> >
> > Asvard
> >
> > Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network
> >
> > ------------ --------- ---------
> > *From*: Eyja Bassadottir
> > *Date*: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 19:42:18 -0500
> > *To*: <norse_course@ yahoogroups. com>
> > *Subject*: Re: [norse_course] Re: futhark
> >
> > On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 8:52 PM, llama_nom <600cell@... >wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> The younger futhark (Viking Age runes) is an ambiguous writing

system in

> >> many ways. Not only is vowel quantity (length) not marked, but

vowels of

> >> several different qualities could be written with the same

letter. In some

> >> systems, voiced stops weren't distinguished from voiceless stops.

How w ill

> >> someone know if they're saying the word correctly? Often they won't

know! In

> >> the era when the inscriptions were made, when people spoke the

language,

> >> they'd know they were pronouncing a word right if they guessed

rightly which

> >> word was intended, just as someone reading Arabic or Hebrew has

to supply

> >> the vowels from their own knowledge. But there would st

w:st="on">ill have been

> >> ambiguities. Although there are vowels in the futhark, there was

no one

> >> fixed convention for how to spell words. Nowadays, we have to

guess as best

> >> we can at what the writers meant.
> >> .
> >>
> >>
> > Another thing that makes it ambiguous is that scholars st

w:st="on">ill debate on

> > which way the runes were read/written. Depending on the orientation,

you

> > might get different meanings (especially with the ambiguity of the
> > letters).
> >
> >
> > I recently listened to a lecture by Professor Anatoly Liberman on the

runes

> > ("One More Hopeless Attempt to Explain the Origin of the Runic

Alphabet").

> > One of his points was that when runes appear (first inscription was

around

> > 1st or 2nd century CE -- I wrote down 1st in my notes but his handout

said

> > 2nd) -- and afterwards as they were used, the inscriptions were short

and

> > extremely uninteresting, and of course change depending on which way

you

> > read them. There's even a spear that repeats the same rune over and

over

> > again (I believe ' ur ')

or some items even have the entire FUTHARK written

> > out. To our modern minds, this seems odd -- we use writing to produce
> > sensical communication through sentences. But Liberman made two

points:

> >
> > 1) that he believed that the runes were not used for their original

purpose

> > (i.e. used for magic (at least by the 13th c. when the sagas were

written)

> > but not *made* for that purpose) (ex. give a math textbook to a three

year

> > old and he'll devise several good uses for it -- a stepping stool,

for

> > instance -- but he doesn't use it for it's *original* purpose) [and

thus

> > not used for that sensical sentence construction we use it for],
> >
> > 2) that if you look at all alphabets, a single letter is never wanted

> > it's the *sequence *that's important ('v' just being a 'v', but
> > 'vvvvvvvvvvvv' being a sequence and thus important, or even just the

entire

> > alphabet (in this case rune-set) produced) [and since the

Scandinavians were

> > not using the runes for our purpose, such a rune repeated would make

sense

> > to them, for whatever purpose they meant it for]
> >
> > In his thought process, the Scandinavians thought the runes were

quaint and

> > strange playthings, but coming from an entirely oral culture, not

necessary

> > (and thus playthings).
> >
> > All of his theories are unprovable (as he said, the truth is probably

lost

> > to time -- if the truth was discoverable, it would have been found

200 years

> > ago) -- the pitfall of etymology -- and is rife with landminds,

(hence the

> > title of his lecture). He just believes, as any etymologist does,

that his

> > theory is the *least* wrong.
> >
> >
> > Holliga,
> > Eyja
> >
> >
>