Runes and the Origins of Writing
Page 15
[←137 ]
Haralds Biezais, Von der Wesensidentität der Religion und Magie, Åbo Akademi, Åbo 1978.
[←138 ]
François-Xavier Dillmann, Les magiciens dans l’Islande ancienne. Etudes sur la représentation de la magie islandaise et de ses agents dans les sources littéraires norroises, Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien för Svensk Folkkultur, Uppsala 2006, p. 12.
[←139 ]
“Tripartition fonctionnelle et écriture runique en Scandinavie à l’époque païenne,” art. cit., p. 250.
[←140 ]
Patrick Moisson, “La polarité magie-religion dans le monde indoeuropéen,” in Etudes indo-européennes, 1990, pp. 137–189.
[←141 ]
Lucien Musset, “Problèmes de runologie,” in Etudes germaniques, 1957, p. 250–253, ici p. 250 (texte repris in Nordica et Normannica, Société des études nordiques, Paris 1997, p. 101).
[←142 ]
Emanuel Linderholm, Nordisk magi. I. Urnordisk magi, P. A. Norstedt, Stockholm 1918.
[←143 ]
Hans Brix, Studier i nordisk runemagi, Nordisk Forlag, København 1928.
[←144 ]
Anders Bæksted, Målruner og troldruner. Runemagiske studier, Gyldendal, København 1952.
[←145 ]
Magnus Olsen, Om troldruner, Akademiska Bokhandeln, Uppsala 1917.
[←146 ]
Wolfgang Morgenroth, “Zahlenmagie in Runeninschriften. Kritische Bemerkungen zu einigen Interpretationsmethoden,” in Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Ernst-Moritz-Arndt Universität Greifswald, 1961, pp. 279–283.
[←147 ]
Raymond I. Page, “Anglo-Saxons, Runes, and Magic,” in Journal of the Archeological Association, 1964, pp. 14–31.
[←148 ]
Runes and Germanic Linguistics, op. cit., p. 39. See also Elmer H. Antonsen, “On the Mythological Interpretation of the Oldest Runic Inscriptions,” in Mohammad Ali Jazayery and Werner Winter (ed.), Languages and Cultures. Studies in Honor of Edgar C. Polomé, Mouton-de Gruyter, Berlin 1988, pp. 43–54.
[←149 ]
Gerd Høst, Runer. Våre eldste norske runeinskrifter, W. Aschehoug & Co., Oslo 1976, p. 15.
[←150 ]
Runes. An Introduction, op. cit., pp. 1–2 (see above).
[←151 ]
Ibid.
[←152 ]
Les dieux et la religion des Germains, op. cit., p. 27.
[←153 ]
Stephen Flowers, whose views can be questionable, offered a good summary on the question: Runes and Magic. Magical Formulaic Elements in the Older Runic Tradition, Peter Lang, New York 1986. On the same topic, see also Karl Martin Nielsen, “Runen und Magie. Ein forschungsgeschichtlicher Überblick,” in Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 1985, pp. 75–97; Peter Buchholz, “Die Runen in religion und Magie. Eddische Zeugnisse zu den Runen — runische Zeugnisse zur vorchristlichen nordgermanischen Religion,” in Etudes germaniques, October-December 1997, pp. 563–580; Robert Nedoma, “Zur Problematik der Deutung älterer Runeninschriften — kultisch, magisch oder profan?,” in Klaus Düwel and Sean Nowak (Hg.), Runeninschriften als Quellen interdisziplinärer Forschung, op. cit., pp. 24–55; John McKinnell, Rudolf Simek and Klaus Düwel, Runes, Magic and Religion. A Sourcebook, Fassbaender, Wien 2004; Mindy MacLeod and Bernard Mees, Runic Amulets and Magic Objects, Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2006. See also the pages Georges Dumézil wrote on Norse magic in La saga de Hadingus (Saxo Grammaticus I, V-VIII). Du mythe au roman, PUF, Paris 1953, as well as René L. M. Derolez, “La divination chez les Germains,” in André Caquot and Marcel Leibovici (ed.), La divination, vol. 1, PUF, Paris 1968, pp. 257–302.
[←154 ]
Introduction à la runologie, op. cit., pp. 142 and 155.
[←155 ]
Ibid., p. 145.
[←156 ]
Ibid., p. 141.
[←157 ]
Anthologie runique, op. cit., p. 85.
[←158 ]
Etudes germaniques, October–December 1997, p. 510.
[←159 ]
Régis Boyer, L’Edda poétique, Fayard, Paris 1992, p. 619. See also Régis Boyer, Le monde du double. La magie chez les anciens Scandinaves, Paris 1986.
[←160 ]
Introduction à la runologie, op. cit., pp. 146–150.
[←161 ]
Klaus Düwel and Wilhelm Heizmann, “Das ältere Fuþark — Überlieferung und Wirkungsmöglichkeiten der Runenreihe,” in Alfred Bammesberger and Gaby Waxenberger (ed.), Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 51, op. cit., p. 45. See also Klaus Düwel, “Runen als magischen Zeichen,” in Peter Ganz and Malcom Parkes (ed.), Das Buch als magisches und als Repräsentationsobjekt, Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1992, pp. 87–100; “Magische Runenzeichen und magische Runeninschriften,” in Staffan Nyström (ed.), Runor och ABC. Elva föreläsningar från ett symposium i Stockholm våren 1995, Stockholms Medeltidsmuseum Stockholm 1997, pp. 23–41.
[←162 ]
Anthologie runique, op. cit., p. 158.
[←163 ]
The expression “to color the runes” is often encountered in inscriptions as well as in the Poetic Edda. It really seems like the runes were originally painted in red or colored with blood. See François-Xavier Dillmann, “Les runes dans la littérature norroise,” in Proxima Thulé, 2, 1996, pp. 66–67.
[←164 ]
Georges Dumézil, Mythes et dieux des Germains, PUF, Paris 1939, p. 24.
[←165 ]
See Wolfgang Krause, “Zur Herkunft von finn. runo ‘Lied’,” in Finnischugrischen
Forschungen, 1969, pp. 91–97.
[←166 ]
See Terence W. Wilbur, “The Word ‘Rune’,” in Scandinavian Studies, 1957, pp. 12–18.
[←167 ]
Richard L. Morris, “Northwest-Germanic rūn- ‘rune’: A Case of Homonymy with Go. rūna ‘mystery’,” in Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, 1985, pp. 344–358.
[←168 ]
In the Gesta Danorum (I, VI, 4–5), this is the case of Harthgrepa, who is presented by Saxo Grammaticus as a woman who engages in necromancian rites with the help of runic signs. Georges Dumézil translated and commented on that passage in La Saga de Hadingus, op. cit., pp. 76–82.
[←169 ]
Les dieux et la religion des Germains, op. cit., pp. 173–174.
[←170 ]
Les magiciens dans l’Islande ancienne, op. cit., p. 125.
[←171 ]
Tacitus, La Germanie. L’origine et le pays des Germains, chap. 10, Arléa, Paris 2009, pp. 36–37, translation Patrick Voisin. Original text: “Auspiciam sortesque ut qui maxime observant: sortium consuetudo simplex: virgam frugiferas arbori decisam in surculos amputant eosque notis quibusdam discretos super candidam vestem temere ac fortuito spargunt. Mox, si publice consultatur, sacerdos civitatis, sin privatim, ipse pater familiæ, precatus deos cælumque suspiciens, ter singulos tollit, sublatos secundum impressam ante notam interpretatur.” There is also a translation by Pierre Grimal: “Les mœurs des Germains,” in Tacitus, Œuvres choisies, Club du meilleur livre, Paris 1959, pp. 33–48. Grimal uses the terms “stick” (and not “branch”), “pieces” (and not “some logs”) and “different signs.” Tacitus, born around 56, died around 117. The exact title of his book should be De origine et situ Germanorum, a title mentioned in the Hersfeldensis, inventory of the monastery of Hersfeld, delivered in 1451 to the pontifical legate Enoch of Escoli so that he could hand it to the Roman Curia, like the pope Nicolas V wanted. We know Germania from that version, which was published for the first time in 1473 in Nuremberg, Germany. Since it was published before the 15th century, some authors wondered whether the text we have in our possession is true copy of the original. See the Eugen Fehrle’s presentation of the Latin-German bilingual edition published in 1957 by Winker in Heidelberg.
[←172 ]
In another passage of his book, Tacitus writes that men and women of Germania don’t write to each other: “When it
comes to letters and their secrets, both men and women are ignorant” (literarum secreta viri pariter ac feminæ ignorant), according to Patrick Voisin’s translation (op. cit., p. 48). But Pierre Grimal prefers the following: “Men and women equally ignore clandestine correspondence” (“Les mœurs des Germains,” p. 43), a sentence with a very different meaning. Tacitus doesn’t mean that Germanic people don’t know how to write, but rather that they don’t form adulterous relationships with the help of secret love letters, unlike in Rome (he explains that “there is very little adultery in such a large nation”).
[←173 ]
Arthur Mentz, “Die ‘notæ’ der Germanen bei Tacitus,” in Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, 1937, pp. 193–205.
[←174 ]
Runes. An Introduction, op. cit., p. 66.
[←175 ]
“Was haben die Germanen mit den Runen gemacht?,” art. cit.
[←176 ]
“Runes in the First Century,” art. cit., pp. 221–222. See also Allan A. Lund, “Zum Germanenbegriff bei Tacitus,” in Heinrich Beck (Hg.), Germanenprobleme in heutiger Sicht, op. cit., pp. 53–87; “Zur Gesamtinterpretation der ‘Germania’ des Tacitus,” in Hildegard Temporini and Wolfgang Haase (ed.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung. II. Principat. 33. Sprache und Literatur, 3, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1991, pp. 1858–1988.
[←177 ]
Introduction à la runologie, op. cit., p. 155.
[←178 ]
There is a curious passage in the Iliad where Homer writes that Prœtus, king of Argos, sent Bellerophon to Lycia to meet its king who is his stepfather, “and delivered to him a gruesome message, sealed tablets that bore death signs” (VI, 168, translation Ch. Georgin and W. Berthaut). In Paul Mazon’s translation, the same passage reads: “He sent Bellerophon to Lycia while giving to him gruesome signs. He had traced many deadly signs on folded tablets.” The text indicates that the king of Lycia welcomed his guest “for nine days” and “had nine steers killed for him” (VI, 170). Maybe we should bring up that the Chinese Yijing (“Book of mutations”) is made trigrams, which are sequences of eight symbols made of segments of straight lines laid out on three levels (8 x 3, like in the ættir). Chinese tradition tells us that the Emperor Fu Xi who reigned in the 18th century BC was the one who created it. Chinese ideographic writing was created around the end of the Shang dynasty, in the 13th or 12th century BC. The first inscriptions (buci), which were inscribed in bovid bones and turtle breastplates had essentially oraculary or divinatory characteristics, which gives us reason to believe that those were the functions of the first ideograms. We still don’t know whether that first Chinese writing was actually autochthonous. See Kwang-chih Chang, Shang Civilization, Yale University Press, New Haven 1980; Jean-Pierre Voiret, “Runenalphabet(e) im Vor-antiken China?,” in Asiatische Studien — Etudes asiatiques, 1997, 4, pp. 1047–1053.
[←179 ]
See Ralph W. V. Elliott, Runes. An Introduction, op. cit., p. 69.
[←180 ]
Anders Bæksted, “Begravede runestene,” in Aarbøger for nordisk oldkyndighed og historie, 1951 [1952], pp. 63–95.
[←181 ]
Anthologie runique, op. cit., p. 99. See also Sven B. F. Jansson, Runes in Sweden, Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, Stockholm 1987, p. 13.
[←182 ]
Edgar C. Polomé, “Notes sur le vocabulaire religieux du germanique I: Runique alu,” in La Nouvelle Clio, 1954, p. 55. See also Edgar C. Polomé, “Beer, Runes and Magic,” in The Journal of Indo-European Studies, 1996, pp. 99–105; Gerd Høst, “Trylleordet alu,” in Norske Vitenskaps-Akademi Årbok, 1980, pp. 35–49; Ute Zimmermann, “Bier, Runen und Macht: Ein Formelwort im Kontext,” in Futhark. International Journal of Runic Studies, V, 2014, pp. 45–64.
[←183 ]
See Palle Lauring, The Land of the Tollund Man, Lutterworth Press, London 1957, pp. 142–143, which made of the Heruli the creators of the Fuþark.
[←184 ]
Otto Höfler, “Herkunft und Ausbreitung des Runen,” in Die Sprache, 1971, pp. 134–156.
[←185 ]
Olof Sundqvist simply speaks of a “ritual specialist” (“Contributions of the Oldest Runic Inscriptions to the Reconstruction of Ancient Scandinavian Religion. Some Methodological Reflections with Reference to an Example of the Phenomenological Category of ‘Ritual Specialists’”), in Oliver Grimm and Alexandra Pesch, Hg., Archäologie und Runen. Fallstudien zu Inschriften im älteren Futhark, op. cit., pp. 121–143).
[←186 ]
See Robert Nedoma, Die Inschrift auf dem Helm B von Negau. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Deutung norditalischer epigraphischer Denkmäler, Fassbaender, Wien 1995 (against Höfler, pp. 18–19).
[←187 ]
Jarl supposedly refers to *erlāz in common Germanic, and not *erilāz in common Germanic. See Harry Andersen, “Om urnordisk erilaR og jarl,” in Sprog og Kultur, 1948, pp. 97–102. On the difficulties involved in derivating jarl erilaR, see also Eric Elgqvist, Studier rörande Njordkultens spridning bland de nordiska folken, Olin, Lund 1952, pp. 117–135; Bernard Mees, “Runic erilaR,” in Nowele, 2003, pp. 41–68. On the Rígsþula, see Georges Dumézil, “La Rígsþula et la structure sociale indo-européenne,” in Revue de l’histoire des religions, 1958, pp. 1–9; François-Xavier Dillmann, “La Rígsþula. Traduction française du poème eddique,” in Proxima Thulé, 5, 2006, pp. 59–72; “La Rígsþula. Présentation d’ensemble du poème eddique et état de la recherché,” in Vittoria Dolcetti Corazza and Renato Gendre (ed.), Lettura dell’Edda. Poesia e prosa, Edizioni dell’Orso, Alessandria 2006, pp. 85–114.
[←188 ]
Ander Hultgård, “Formules de théophanie, de la Scandinavie à l’Iran,” in Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, 6 February 2009, pp. 205–240. The author make a suggested link between various Theophanic formulas attested in Indo-Iranian domains and Vedic domains, which originally were recited during public worship.
[←189 ]
Introduction à la runologie, op. cit., p. 168.
[←190 ]
The compound reginkunnr, “of divine origin,” also meant of “divine nature.” See Maurice Cahen, “L’adjectif ‘divin’ en germanique,” in Mélanges offerts à M. Charles Andler par ses amis et ses élèves, Strasbourg 1924, pp. 79–107; François-Xavier Dillmann, “Les runes dans la littérature norroise,” art. cit., pp. 77–78. See also Mario Polia, Le rune e gli dèi del Nord, Il Cerchio, Rimini 1999.
[←191 ]
“The Poetic Edda,” writes Régis Boyer, “indisputably goes back to an oral tradition that the scribes of the 13th century didn’t really understand anymore, like the errors they often made in their transcriptions show […] Those poems were obviously spread from word of mouth for centuries before they were written down.” (L’Edda poétique, op. cit., p. 73). The Poetic Edda has been rediscovered in 1643 by the Icelandic bishop Brynjulf Sveinsson (1605–1675).
[←192 ]
Ibid., pp. 196–197, translation Régis Boyer.
[←193 ]
Françoise Bader, La langue des dieux ou l’hermétisme des poètes indoeuropéens, Giardini, Pise 1988, p. 41. But see also Edgar C. Polomé’s criticism, “Inspiration, connaissance, magie ou voyance. La fonction fondamentale du dieu *Wôðan(az) et l’étymologie de son nom,” in Incognita, 1991, pp. 32–47.
[←194 ]
Les Indo-Européens, op. cit., p. 387.
[←195 ]
Renauld-Krantz, Structures de la mythologie nordique, G. P. Maisonneuve and Larose, Paris 1962, pp. 63–64.
[←196 ]
La Saga de Egil Skallagrimsson. Histoire poétique d’un Viking scandinave du Xe siècle, Office de publicité, Bruxelles 1925, p. 99, translation F. Wagner. We also go by Françoix-Xavier Dillmann’s translation (“Les runes dans la littérature noroise,” art. cit., p. 59). For the original text, see Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, ed. by Sigurður Nordal, Hið Ís
lenzka Fornritafélag, Reykjavik 1933. See also Felix Genzmer, “Die Geheimrunen der Egilssaga,” in Arkiv för nordisk filologi, 1952, pp. 39–47.