Posted on 03/08/2023 11:05:31 AM PST by SunkenCiv
In the Middle Ages, the Roman alphabet and runes lived side by side. A new doctoral thesis challenges the notion that runes represent more of an oral and less of a learned form of written language.
...Johan Bollaert, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies... has investigated written language used in public inscriptions in Norway from the 1100s to the 1500s. Last autumn, he defended his doctoral thesis "Visuality and Literacy in the Medieval Epigraphy of Norway."
The assumption that runes represent a more oral tradition is based on the idea that runic inscriptions are contextually bound and are rarely in Latin—which is associated with a scholarly culture...
Another reason for the assumption may be that researchers have compared runic inscriptions with medieval Latin manuscripts...
What Bollaert has investigated is called epigraphy, the study of reading and interpreting inscriptions. He has compared letter inscriptions with runic inscriptions in wood, stone and metal. This is the first time research has been conducted on inscriptions of letters from the Middle Ages in all of Norway.
Since the use of written language in the Middle Ages largely took place in an ecclesiastical context, most of the texts are from gravestones and are stored in museums around Norway. The largest exhibition is located in a cellar at Nidaros Cathedral, while a few can still be found in cemeteries. He has also looked at graffiti on church walls...
Here, he has found that the visual resources are used to the same extent on runic inscriptions as on those involving letters. However, there are some differences.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
Inscriptions of both runes and letters have been found from the Middle Ages. Johan Bollaert has found equal use of visual resources in both inscriptions. But there are also differences between the use of runes and letter inscriptions. Among other things, the runes (on the left) were carved into hard rock types such as granite and quartzite, while letter inscriptions were carved into softer rock types such as marble and limestone.Credit: University of Oslo
The Vikings traveled a lot. How did they manage to talk to people?
How did they communicate without learning languages in school or having access to dictionaries?
Ingrid Schou
Monday, February 27, 2023
https://sciencenorway.no/communication-language-travel/the-vikings-traveled-a-lot-how-did-they-manage-to-talk-to-people/2159106
[the following caption is on an image *I scanned* about 20 years ago, with a really bad scanner I had then, kind of them to preserve it, so, no harm no foul — not least because I scanned it out of her book; I think this caption is mine as well, it’ll probably turn up in an FR search, but with the graphic link a dead one]
http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/Images/palaeowriting.jpg
In her Plato Prehistorian: 10,000 to 5,000 B.C. Myth, Religion, Archaeology, Mary Settegast reproduces a table (above) which shows four runic character sets; a is Upper Palaeolithic (found among the cave paintings), b is Indus Valley script, c is Greek (western branch), and d is the Scandinavian runic alphabet.
http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/writingorigin.htm
So, runes weren’t ruined?........................
Who are the rune Virgils, Horaces and Ovids?
Too bad The Immigrant Song isn’t on that one, it would have been a nice bump.
Ovid should have been a Viking.
Now, since the sea's great surges sweep me on, all canvas spread, hear me!
In all creation nothing endures, all is an endless flux.
Each wandering shape a pilgrim passing by, and time itself, glides on in ceaseless flow.
A rolling stream, and streams can never stay, nor lightfoot hours,
as wave is driven by wave, and each pursued, pursues the wave ahead.
So time flies on and follows. Flies and follows always, forever new.
What was before is left behind. What never was is now...Ovid, "The Doctrines of Pythagoras," The Metamorphosis
Seriously, besides the graphic, that caption is word-for-word from a number of earlier posts here.
https://search.brave.com/search?q=Plato+Prehistorian+mary+settegast+site%3Afreerepublic.com
I’m gettin’ old.
https://omniglot.com/images/bg/bg_left.gif
background-color: #6699CC;
https://omniglot.com/images/bg/bg_right.gif
There’s a four character inscription above the entrance to the Great Pyramid, btw. My bootleg (tinypic) versions are long gone of course, but I’m guessing they’re out there somewhere on the web.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1331709/posts
https://omniglot.com/writing/carian.php
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