[gothic-l] Re: Crimean runes

[Troels Brandt]

I agree in your comments below. It was the connection Kerch - Goths - 
Romenia - Pietroassa - Reicherts "J"-rune (discussed as at 
Stentoften) which made me suggest this theoretical possibility.

Troels

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <600cell at o...> wrote:
> 
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Troels Brandt" <trbrandt at p...> 
> wrote:
> 
> > I am not the right to answer and llama has answered the linquistc 
> > part.
> 
> 
> Far from it: I haven´t answered anything, only suggested some more 
> questions!  I just tried to give a summary of what sort of 
> inscriptions have been found so far that are attributed to East 
> Germanic peoples such as the Goths and Heruls.  Anything else is 
> pure speculation on my part.
> 
> Troels mentions the idea of runes used as ideographs, standing for 
> the concept represented by the name of the rune 
> (called "Begriffsrunen" in German, "begrepsruner" in Norwegian, 
> which term is sometimes translated "concept runes" in English).  
> That´s something I hadn´t thought of, but an interesting 
possibility 
> to consider.  The technique is probably used in some Scandinavian 
> inscriptions predating the Viking Age (e.g. Stentoften & Gummarp), 
> and it is attested somewhat later in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, but 
> there are many inscriptions where the use of concept runes is 
> disputed, or impossible to prove.  There is one widely accepted 
> example of a concept rune in an inscription considered to be 
Gothic: 
> the Pietroassa ring, found in Romania.  Here, as at Stentoften, the 
> ideograph as part of a text which otherwise is spelt out in full--
> rather than a series of initials.
> 
> Here is a quote from JH Looijenga's book "Runes Around the North 
> Sea...", she is talking about finds from before the Viking period:
> 
> "Personally I have difficulties determining when and if an 
> ideographic rune (or Begriffsrune) was used, since the runewriters' 
> criteria for using them are unknown to us. There is at least
> one clear instance of the use of an ideographic rune: the single j 
> rune on the Stentoften stone, representing its name *jara 
> meaning `good year' = harvest. The peculiar use of this ideograph
> is further emphasized by the fact that it was carved in an archaic 
> fashion. The h in Thorsberg aisgzh may or may not be such a 
> Begriffsrune, there is no graphic peculiarity (h has no
> archaic forerunner), but, in Antonsen's interpretation, it could 
> symbolize its name on syntactic grounds. In some other cases, 
> isolated runes may be read as abbreviations, such as the r in the
> Sievern bracteate, which apparently denotes r[unoz]. Single runes 
> may have been read as abbreviations in the oldest inscriptions, and 
> may later on have come to represent the symbolic meaning of the 
> rune's name."
> 
> http://www.ub.rug.nl/eldoc/dis/arts/j.h.looijenga/
> 
> 
> Needless to say, with a whole series of abbreviations, it would be 
> very hard to narrow down the possible interpretations.  If they 
> stood for the concepts embodied in the rune names, it's easy to 
> think up symbolic interpretations, but hard if not impossible to 
> test them.
> 
> Llama Nom





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