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Narsaq Stick
The Narsaq stick is a pine twig inscribed with runic symbols dating to ca. 1000. The stick was discovered in Narsaq in Greenland in 1953 and was quickly seen as a significant find, as it was the first Viking Age runic inscription discovered in Greenland. The stick has two sentences of ambiguous and obscure runic text. One suggested interpretation of the first sentence is "He who sat on a tub saw a tub" while another is "On the sea, the sea, the sea is the ambush of the Æsir". The other sentence refers to a maiden named "Bibrau" who may be sitting on the sky. The runic alphabet is carved on one side of the stick in a short-twig form. Yet another side has a series of carefully carved symbols of unclear meaning, possibly cipher runes or some sort of tally. Scholars have suggested various possibilities for the purpose of the stick. Relatively mundane ideas include that the text is a play on words, a pedagogical exercise in runic ambiguity or a riddle. Magical and religious purposes ...
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Narsaq Stick Drawing By Imer
Narsaq is a town in the Kujalleq municipality in southern Greenland. The name ''Narsaq'' is Kalaallisut for "Plain", referring to the shore of Tunulliarfik Fjord where the town is located. History People have lived in the area for thousands of years, but not continuously. Remains of the Norse settlement can be found in the area. The church ruins of Dyrnæs can be found on the north-western outskirts of the town. The Landnám homestead, ''Landnamsgaarden'', can be found immediately to the west of the town. Dated to the year 1000, the homestead is among the oldest of the Norse ruins in the area. Excavation of the ruins began in 1953 with the discovery of the Narsaq stick, the first Viking Age runic inscription discovered in Greenland. The wider Narsaq area has some of the most striking Norse artefacts and ruins. Erik the Red's Brattahlid is located in present-day Qassiarsuk, and the Gardar bishop seat is in present-day Igaliku. Present day Narsaq was founded as Nordprøven ...
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Short-twig Runes
The Younger Futhark, also called Scandinavian runes, is a runic alphabet and a reduced form of the Elder Futhark, with only 16 characters, in use from about the 9th century, after a "transitional period" during the 7th and 8th centuries. The reduction, somewhat paradoxically, happened at the same time as phonetic changes that led to a greater number of different phonemes in the spoken language, when Proto-Norse evolved into Old Norse. Also, the writing custom avoided carving the same rune consecutively for the same sound, so the spoken distinction between long and short vowels was lost in writing. Thus, the language included distinct sounds and minimal pairs that were written the same. The Younger Futhark is divided into long-branch (Danish) and short-twig (Swedish and Norwegian) runes; in the 10th century, it was further expanded by the "Hälsinge Runes" or staveless runes. The lifetime of the Younger Futhark corresponds roughly to the Viking Age. Their use declined after t ...
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Cipher Runes
Cipher runes, or cryptic runes, are the cryptographical replacement of the letters of the runic alphabet. Preservation The knowledge of cipher runes was best preserved in Iceland, and during the 17th–18th centuries, Icelandic scholars produced several treatises on the subject. The most notable of these is the manuscript ''Runologia'' by Jón Ólafsson (1705–1779), which he wrote in Copenhagen (1732–1752). It thoroughly treats numerous cipher runes and runic ciphers, and it is now preserved in the Arnamagnæan Institute in Copenhagen. Jón Ólafsson's treatise presents the Younger Futhark in the Viking Age order, which means that the m-rune precedes the l-rune. This small detail was of paramount importance for the interpretation of Viking Age cipher runes because in the 13th century the two runes had changed places through the influence of the Latin alphabet where ''l'' precedes ''m''. Since the medieval runic calendar used the post-13th-century order, the early runolog ...
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Narsaq Stick Side C
Narsaq is a town in the Kujalleq municipality in southern Greenland. The name ''Narsaq'' is Kalaallisut for "Plain", referring to the shore of Tunulliarfik Fjord where the town is located. History People have lived in the area for thousands of years, but not continuously. Remains of the Norse settlement can be found in the area. The church ruins of Dyrnæs can be found on the north-western outskirts of the town. The Landnám homestead, ''Landnamsgaarden'', can be found immediately to the west of the town. Dated to the year 1000, the homestead is among the oldest of the Norse ruins in the area. Excavation of the ruins began in 1953 with the discovery of the Narsaq stick, the first Viking Age runic inscription discovered in Greenland. The wider Narsaq area has some of the most striking Norse artefacts and ruins. Erik the Red's Brattahlid is located in present-day Qassiarsuk, and the Gardar bishop seat is in present-day Igaliku. Present day Narsaq was founded as Nordprøven ...
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Old Norse Morphology
Old Norse has three categories of verbs (strong, weak, & present-preterite) and two categories of nouns (strong, weak). Conjugation and declension are carried out by a mix of inflection and two nonconcatenative morphological processes: umlaut, a backness-based alteration to the root vowel; and ablaut, a replacement of the root vowel, in verbs. Nouns, adjectives and pronouns are declined in four grammatical cases – nominative, accusative, genitive and dative, in singular and plural. Some pronouns (first and second person) have dual number in addition to singular and plural. The nouns have three grammatical genders – masculine, feminine or neuter - and adjectives and pronouns are declined to match the gender of nouns. The genitive is used partitively, and quite often in compounds and kennings (e.g.: ''Urðarbrunnr'', the well of Urðr; ''Lokasenna'', the gibing of Loki). Most declensions (of nouns and pronouns) use ''-a'' as a regular genitive plural ending, and all declensi ...
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Bláinn
In Norse mythology, Ymir (, ), also called Aurgelmir, Brimir, or Bláinn, is the ancestor of all jötnar. Ymir is attested in the '' Poetic Edda'', compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional material, in the ''Prose Edda'', written by Snorri Sturluson in the 13th century, and in the poetry of skalds. Taken together, several stanzas from four poems collected in the ''Poetic Edda'' refer to Ymir as a primeval being who was born from Eitr, yeasty venom that dripped from the icy rivers called the Élivágar, and lived in the grassless void of Ginnungagap. Ymir gave birth to a male and female from his armpits, and his legs together begat a six-headed being. The grandsons of Búri, the gods Odin, Vili and Vé, fashioned the Earth (elsewhere personified as a goddess, Jörð) from his flesh, from his blood the ocean, from his bones the mountains, from his hair the trees, from his brains the clouds, from his skull the heavens, and from his eyebrows the middle realm i ...
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Vættir
The vættir (Old Norse: ; singular vættr ) are spirits in Norse mythology. The term can be used to refer to the full cosmos of supernatural beings, including the álfar (elves), dvergar (dwarves), jötnar (giants), and gods (the Æsir and Vanir). Vættir can also refer more specifically to landvættir (, nature spirits), fjallvættir (, mountain spirits), sjóvættir (, sea spirits), skogvættir (, forest spirits), vatnavættir (, guardians of the specific waters), or húsvættir (, house spirits). Etymology The Old Norse term ''véttr'' , / ''vættr'' and its English cognate ''wight'' are descended from Proto-Germanic ''*wihtiz'' (thing, creature), from Proto-Indo-European ''*wekti-'' ("object, thing"). ''Vættr'' and ''wight'' normally refer to a supernatural being, especially landvættr (land spirit), but can refer to any creature. The Norwegian ''vette'' is used much in the same way as the Old Norse ''vættr'' as are the corresponding Swedish cognate ''vätte'' (diale ...
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Bifröst
In Norse mythology, Bifröst (), also called Bilröst, is a burning rainbow bridge that reaches between Midgard (Earth) and Asgard, the realm of the gods. The bridge is attested as ''Bilröst'' in the ''Poetic Edda''; compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and as ''Bifröst'' in the ''Prose Edda''; written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson, and in the poetry of skalds. Both the ''Poetic Edda'' and the ''Prose Edda'' alternately refer to the bridge as Ásbrú (Old Norse "Æsir's bridge").Simek (2007:19). According to the ''Prose Edda'', the bridge ends in heaven at Himinbjörg, the residence of the god Heimdall, who guards it from the jötnar. The bridge's destruction during Ragnarök by the forces of Muspell is foretold. Scholars have proposed that the bridge may have originally represented the Milky Way and have noted parallels between the bridge and another bridge in Norse mythology, Gjallarbrú. Etymology Scholar Andy Orchard suggests that ' ...
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Second Sentence Of Narsaq Stick
The second (symbol: s) is the unit of time in the International System of Units (SI), historically defined as of a day – this factor derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of Units ( SI) is more precise:The second ..is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the caesium frequency, Δ''ν''Cs, the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom, to be when expressed in the unit Hz, which is equal to s−1. This current definition was adopted in 1967 when it became feasible to define the second based on fundamental properties of nature with caesium clocks. Because the speed of Earth's rotation varies and is slowing ever so slightly, a leap second is added at irregular intervals to civil time to keep clocks in sync with Earth's rotation. Uses Analog clocks and watches often ha ...
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Rán
In Norse mythology, Rán (Old Norse: ) is a goddess and a personification of the sea. Rán and her husband Ægir, a jötunn who also personifies the sea, have nine daughters, who personify waves. The goddess is frequently associated with a net, which she uses to capture sea-goers. According to the prose introduction to a poem in the ''Poetic Edda'' and in ''Völsunga saga'', Rán once loaned her net to the god Loki. Rán is attested in the ''Poetic Edda'', compiled during the 13th century from earlier traditional sources; the ''Prose Edda'', written during the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson; in both ''Völsunga saga'' and '' Friðþjófs saga hins frœkna''; and in the poetry of skalds, such as ''Sonatorrek'', a 10th-century poem by Icelandic skald Egill Skallagrímsson. Etymology The Old Norse common noun ''rán'' means 'plundering' or 'theft, robbery'.Faulkes (1998: 250) and discussion in Simek (2007 993 260). In turn, scholars view the theonym ''Rán'' as meaning, for examp ...
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Ægir
Ægir (anglicised as Aegir; Old Norse 'sea'), Hlér (Old Norse 'sea'), or Gymir (Old Norse less clearly 'sea, engulfer'), is a jötunn and a personification of the sea in Norse mythology. In the Old Norse record, Ægir hosts the gods in his halls and is associated with brewing ale. Ægir is attested as married to a goddess, Rán, who also personifies the sea, and together the two produced daughters who personify waves, the Nine Daughters of Ægir and Rán, and Ægir's son is Snær, personified snow. Ægir may also be the father of the beautiful jötunn Gerðr, wife of the god Freyr, or these may be two separate figures who share the same name (see below and Gymir (father of Gerðr)). One of Ægir's names, ''Hlér'', is the namesake of the island Læsø (Old Norse ''Hléysey'' 'Hlér's island') and perhaps also Lejre in Denmark. Scholars have long analyzed Ægir's role in the Old Norse corpus, and the concept of the figure has had some influence in modern popular culture. Names ...
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