Viking runestone may allude to extreme winter, study says

[Imperial Dave]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/08/viking-runestone-may-allude-to-extreme-winter-study-says?CMP=share_btn_tw

Blimey....topical or what?!

[Duncan Head]

Or is it just referring to the mythical Fimbulwinter? Hard to form an opinion without a translation.

[Imperial Dave]

this is true!

[Andreas Johansson]

The Rök Stone inscription is decidedly obscure, but this translation from WP represents something like the scholarly consensus:

In memory of Vémóðr/Vámóðr stand these runes.
And Varinn coloured them, the father,
in memory of his dead son.

I say the folktale / to the young men, which the two war-booties were, which twelve times were taken as war-booty, both together from various men.

I say this second, who nine generations ago lost his life with the Hreidgoths; and died with them for his guilt.

Þjóðríkr the bold,
chief of sea-warriors,
ruled over the shores of the Hreiðsea.
Now he sits armed
on his Goth(ic horse),
his shield strapped,
the prince of the Mærings.

I say this the twelfth, where the horse of Gunnr sees fodder on the battlefield, where twenty kings lie.

This I say as thirteenth, which twenty kings sat on Sjólund for four winters, of four names, born of four brothers: five Valkis, sons of Hráðulfr, five Hreiðulfrs, sons of Rugulfr, five Háisl, sons of Hôrðr, five Gunnmundrs/Kynmundrs, sons of Bjôrn.

Now I say the tales in full. Someone ...

I say the folktale / to the young men, which of the line of Ingold was repaid by a wife's sacrifice.

I say the folktale / to the young men, to whom is born a relative, to a valiant man. It is Vélinn. He could crush a giant. It is Vélinn ... [Nit]

I say the folktale / to the young men: Þórr. Sibbi of Vé, nonagenarian, begot (a son).

Þjóðríkr is usually taken to be Theoderic the Great, and the the "now he sits" bit to refer to the famous equestrian statue of him. Gunnr ("Battle") is known from the sagas as the name of a valkyrie, and the horse of a valkyrie should be a kenning for a wolf. Þórr is of course Thor, the god of thunder.

"Hreidgoths" should really be "Hreiðgoths" (the fifth rune is thorn)  and they're clearly something to do with the "Hreiðsea".

Connecting anything of it to fears of extreme winter strikes me as stretched.

ETA: Fodder for wolves is people slain in battle. Sjólund may be Zealand, Denmark, and Mærings have been suggested on contextual grounds to mean the Ostrogothic royal house, on phonological to be Moravians (as in people from Moravia, Czechia, not Moray). Vé may be a placename, or a common noun meaning a shrine, which case Sibbi was presumably some sort of priest - other translations have "Sibbi, guardian of the shrine".

[Duncan Head]

Connecting anything of it to fears of extreme winter strikes me as stretched.

I can't see it either. Perhaps these "researchers from several disciplines" will publish a fuller study in due course.

[Imperial Dave]

Thanks for the reply Andreas....immensely interesting!

[Andreas Johansson]

I found a Swedish article with a little more detail than the Guardian piece. Using a rather different translation* than the above, they conclude that the answer to most of the questions is "the Sun", from which they somehow leap to the conclusion the text is about fear of a repeat of an "earlier climate disaster". The latter likely refers to the extreme weather events of 535-536, sometimes assumed to be the basis for the mythological Fimbulwinter, but it would undoubtedly violate the professional ethics of science journalists to make that clear.

Perhaps the journalist also left out something that would justify the leap from riddles about the Sun to fears about extreme winter, but I cannot avoid the suspicion that the interpretation is a whole lot more to do with the researchers' concerns than with Varinn's.


* For a start, they don't read Þjóðríkr's name there at all, taking raiþiaurikʀ not as réð þjóðrikr "ruled Þjóðríkr" but as réð jó, rinkʀ "rode (the) horse, (the) warrior". This may be undecidable - runic writing generally refuses to repeat the same rune twice, even when, as here in the "Þjóðrík" reading, it would denote two different sounds in succession, and no distinction is made between /k/ and /nk/. Note also that the "Þjóðríkr" reading assumes a ð has fallen out of pronunciation or spelling, which would be far from unprecedented but still a bit of a strike against it.

Edit: Normalized the transcription of the "warrior" reading, in case anyone cares; should make the difference in interpretation a bit clearer.

[Patrick Waterson]

I am inclined to think we are rather fortunate to have Andreas.

[Imperial Dave]

absolutely! Very useful work indeed

[Andreas Johansson]

Thanks