{"id":707,"date":"2018-12-14T09:41:55","date_gmt":"2018-12-14T08:41:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.runforum.nordiska.uu.se\/blog\/?p=707"},"modified":"2023-04-19T13:20:28","modified_gmt":"2023-04-19T11:20:28","slug":"happy-international-day-of-runology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.runforum.nordiska.uu.se\/blog\/happy-international-day-of-runology\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy International Day of Runology!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Venantius Fortunatus Reading His Poems to Radegonda VI. Painting by Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1862, Public Domain.<\/p><\/div>\n

Today, December 14, is the international day of Runology (unilaterally declared by me, five years ago). I take it for granted that all readers of this blog will celebrate it in a proper runic fashion, whatever that may be.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why did I pick this particular day? Well, December 14 happens to be the feast day of Saint Venantius Fortunatus (ca. 530 \u2013 ca. 600\/609 AD). He was born outside Venice, became bishop in France and was a famous author of his time. He was canonized, and if runology has any guardian saint he is the one.<\/p>\n

Barbara fraxineis pingatur runa tabellis<\/em>. Qvodque papyrus agit virgula plana valet
\n<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Venantius Fortunatus made the first ever (external) observation on the use of runes, and thus qualifies as the first runic researcher. To a friend who was a slow correspondent he wrote: Barbara fraxineis pingatur runa tabellis<\/em>. Qvodque papyrus agit virgula plana valet<\/em>. \u2018You may also paint barbaric runes on tablets of ash wood; what papyrus achieves a smoothed wooden staff can do as well.\u2019<\/p>\n

We know runes were carved on ash wood, on the lance shaft from Nydam, for example.<\/p>\n

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Fifth century runic inscription (uninterpreted) on an ashen lance shaft from Nydam, Denmark. Photo: National Museum of Denmark, CC BY-SA.<\/p><\/div>\n

Venantius Fortunatus\u2019 poem Pange lingua gloriosi<\/em> is used as a hymn in many traditions, including The Book of Common Prayer<\/a> (number 97) and the Swedish hymnal, where it is split in two as number 147<\/a>, and 456<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is also the month of Christmas. On Christmas Eve itself our V\u00e4xj\u00f6 runologist, Per Stille, celebrates his 70th<\/sup> birthday. Uppsala Runic Forum wishes him Many Happy Returns of the day, and encourages everyone to send him a kind thought or even a congratulation (per.stille at lnu.se).<\/p>\n

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Per Stille and the Karlevi runestone (\u00d6l 1). Photo: Marco Bianchi, CC BY.<\/p><\/div>\n

Christmas also means presents, and I would be remiss if I did not thank all those people who have contributed so generously to runic research in the past year. In no particular order I would like to mention Sue Carlson (New York) and Nils Hasselmo (Houston), as well as Barb Swadburg and Jim Kurle, Loraine Jensen, Eleanor Dahlquist and our constant benefactress Myrna Smith<\/a> (all Minnesota). Not only do these gift make a tremendous difference, the very thoughtfulness of the donations give us real hope for a runic future.<\/p>\n

The Vikings\u2019 Christmas was called jul<\/em>, as it still is in Scandinavia<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As this is the last blog post of the year, I would like to end it with a bit of runic education. The Vikings\u2019 Christmas was called jul<\/em>, as it still is in Scandinavia. There are personal names in runic inscriptions with the first element jul<\/em>-: Julfast<\/em> and Julger<\/em>, for example. Lena Peterson<\/a> interprets the first element of these names as being derived from the word igull<\/em> \u2018hedgehog\u2019. The name Juli<\/em>, known from two runestones, would then be a short form of such names, perhaps a nickname.<\/p>\n

It pains me to contradict such a great authority on names, and my cherished former supervisor to boot, but in the spirit of the season I feel obliged to propose that we are instead dealing with a name element jul<\/em>-, English yule<\/em> \u2018Christmas\u2019.<\/p>\n

Yule Frith!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A woman named Julfrid<\/em> is mentioned on a medieval runic lead plate in the Dominican friars\u2019 convent in Sk\u00e4nninge, in the province of \u00d6sterg\u00f6tland. Inspired by her name, I wish you all peaceful holidays in somewhat antiquated English: Yule Frith<\/a>!<\/p>\n

\"\"

A runic Santa Claus Christmas greeting from my esteemed colleague Magnus K\u00e4llstr\u00f6m (used with his permission), inspired by the cliff inscription S\u00f6 175 at Lagn\u00f6 on Asp\u00f6 in Lake M\u00e4laren.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I take it for granted that all readers of this blog will celebrate this day in a proper runic fashion, whatever that may be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[275,273,283,279,287,281,271,277,269,285,289],"class_list":["post-707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-runes","tag-aspo","tag-international-day-of-runology","tag-jul","tag-karlevi","tag-nydam-lance-shaft","tag-ol-1","tag-per-stille","tag-so-175","tag-venantius-fortunatus","tag-yule","tag-yule-frith"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","wps_subtitle":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p84WLx-bp","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runforum.nordiska.uu.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runforum.nordiska.uu.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runforum.nordiska.uu.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runforum.nordiska.uu.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runforum.nordiska.uu.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=707"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.runforum.nordiska.uu.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1115,"href":"https:\/\/www.runforum.nordiska.uu.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707\/revisions\/1115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.runforum.nordiska.uu.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runforum.nordiska.uu.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.runforum.nordiska.uu.se\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}