Tea at Trianon: Norse Runes

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, March 27, 2023

Norse Runes

From Medievalists:

In the Middle Ages, the Roman alphabet and Norse 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.
“’Here rests Bishop Peter’ might have been inscribed on a gravestone from the 1200s. Some inscriptions might have been made using runes, others with Roman letters”, says Johan Bollaert, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Oslo in Norway. He has investigated written language used in public inscriptions in Norway from the 1100s to the 1500s. Bollaert recently 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. “But Old Norse can also be written, and it is not written any worse just because it is the vernacular”, says Bollaert.
Another reason for the assumption may be that researchers have compared runic inscriptions with medieval Latin manuscripts. “I think this is wrong, because inscriptions and manuscripts have different forms and functions. A manuscript is often written so that it can be read and understood out of context, i.e. in other places and times. A gravestone, on the other hand, was made to be placed and understood locally”, he explains. “While it is easy to write a sentence or two on parchment, it takes time and effort to carve words into a piece of stone. Therefore, the text used in inscriptions will necessarily be shorter and simpler.” (Read more.)