The Lunnasting stone is a stone bearing an

ogham Ogham (Modern Irish: ; mga, ogum, ogom, later mga, ogam, label=none ) is an Early Medieval alphabet used primarily to write the early Irish language (in the "orthodox" inscriptions, 4th to 6th centuries AD), and later the Old Irish langua ...

inscription, found at

Lunnasting Vidlin (from Old Norse: ''Vaðill'' meaning a ford) is a small village located on Mainland, Shetland, Scotland. The settlement is within the parish of Nesting. History It is at the head of Vidlin Voe, and is the modern heart of the old parish ...

Shetland Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands and formerly Zetland, is a subarctic archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands and Norway. It is the northernmost region of the United Kingdom. The islands lie about to the no ...

and donated to the

National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland The National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, Scotland, was formed in 2006 with the merger of the new Museum of Scotland, with collections relating to Scottish antiquities, culture of Scotland, culture and History of Scotland, history, and the ...

in 1876.

Discovery

The stone was found by Rev. J.C. Roger in a cottage, who stated that it had been unearthed from a "moss" (i.e. a

peat Peat (), also known as turf (), is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation or organic matter. It is unique to natural areas called peatlands, bogs, mires, moors, or muskegs. The peatland ecosystem covers and is the most efficien ...

bog) in April 1876, having been discovered five feet (1.5 m) below the surface."LTING/1"

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

, quoting Forsyth, K. (1996) "The Ogham Inscriptions of Scotland: An Edited Corpus". Unpublished PhD. Harvard University. Retrieved 12 July 2009. The stone is made of slate and is long, by about in breadth and thick with the inscription on the flat surface. In addition to the ogham letters, which are arranged down a centre line, there is a small cruciform mark near the top, which may be a

runic Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...

letter or a Christian cross. It is unknown whether this mark was made at the same time as the ogham, or added later.

Inscription and date

The

Pictish Pictish is the extinct language, extinct Brittonic language spoken by the Picts, the people of eastern and northern Scotland from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. Virtually no direct attestations of Pictish remain, short of a limited num ...

inscription has been read as: :''ttocuhetts: ahehhttmnnn: hccvvevv: nehhton'' by Allen and Anderson (1903) :''ettecuhetts: ahehhttannn: hccvvevv: nehhtons'' by Forsyth (1996) The script probably contains the personal name " Nechtan", and Diack (1925) took the view that the last two words mean “the vassal of Nehtonn“ but it is otherwise without certain interpretation. Forsyth suggests ''Ahehhttannn'' is also a personal name. Other recent attempts include: :"King Nechtan of the kin of Ahehhtmnnn" :"The widow of Kenneth made (these as) testimonials on her part". The word-dividing dots suggest Norse influence, but this could pre-date the Viking occupation of Shetland, and an eighth- or ninth-century origin is likely for the ogham work.

Other theories

The difficulties in providing a clear interpretation of the script have led to a number of other suggestions. Vincent (1896) suggests that the stone may have been erected by "Irish missionary monks not earlier than A.D. 580" and quotes an unnamed expert's transcription of the ogham as: :''eattuicheatts maheadttannn hccffstff ncdtons''. Lockwood (1975) writes that "the last word is clearly the commonly occurring name Nechton, but the rest, even allowing for the perhaps arbitrary doubling of consonants in Ogam, appears so exotic that philologists conclude that Pictish was a non-Indo-European language of unknown affinities". This view was also taken of the ogham inscribed on the

Orcadian Orcadians, also known as Orkneymen, are an ethnic group native to the Orkney Islands, who speak an Orcadian dialect of the Scots language, a West Germanic language, and share a common history, culture and ancestry. Speaking Norn, a native North G ...

Buckquoy spindle-whorl The Buckquoy spindle-whorl is an Ogham-inscribed spindle-whorl dating from the Early Middle Ages, probably the 8th century, which was found in 1970 in Buckquoy, Birsay, Orkney, Scotland. Made of sandy limestone, it is about 36 mm in diameter ...

until its 1995 interpretation as

Old Irish Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic ( sga, Goídelc, Ogham script: ᚌᚑᚔᚇᚓᚂᚉ; ga, Sean-Ghaeilge; gd, Seann-Ghàidhlig; gv, Shenn Yernish or ), is the oldest form of the Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive writt ...

. A language of

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...

origin has also been suggested as providing a solution: :''etxekoez aiekoan nahigabe ba nengoen'' (English: "The one of the house found me without will in the pain.") although the original speculations in 1968 by Henri Guiter do not appear convincing and were not well received academically."Scotland's Ogam Inscriptions".
University of California, Riverside. Retrieved 12 July 2009. This paper quotes a 1969 radio talk by Douglas Gifford of the Department of Spanish of St. Andrew's University, who said that Guiter had "twisted the evidence", but also suggested that the Basque connection was worth a further look. The Vasconist scholar

Larry Trask Robert Lawrence Trask (10 November 1944 – 27 March 2004) was an American–British professor of linguistics at the University of Sussex, and an authority on the Basque language and the field of historical linguistics. Biography Born in Ole ...

said "like the majority of such dramatic announcements, this one has been universally rejected. Pictish specialists dismiss it out of hand, and vasconists have been no more impressed". The criticisms focus on random readings being assigned to Ogam letters, alleged complete decipherment of inscriptions too weathered to be read with certainty, the use of 20th century Basque rather than reconstructed

Proto-Basque Proto-Basque ( eu, aitzineuskara; es, protoeuskera, protovasco; french: proto-basque), or Pre-Basque, is the reconstructed predecessor of the Basque language before the Roman conquests in the Western Pyrenees. Background The first linguist wh ...

forms, disregarding syntax and highly fanciful translations. Trask, L. ''The History of Basque'' Routledge: 1997 The '' tecuhetts'' part has been understood as an early

Brittonic Brittonic or Brythonic may refer to: *Common Brittonic, or Brythonic, the Celtic language anciently spoken in Great Britain *Brittonic languages, a branch of the Celtic languages descended from Common Brittonic *Britons (Celtic people) The Br ...

expression, meaning "this is as far" (c.f.

Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...

''cyhyd'', "as long as"), a suitable message for a

boundary stone A boundary marker, border marker, boundary stone, or border stone is a robust physical marker that identifies the start of a land boundary or the change in a boundary, especially a change in direction of a boundary. There are several other ty ...

Notes

References

* Schei, Liv Kjørsvik (2006) ''The Shetland Isles''. Grantown-on-Spey. Colin Baxter Photography.

External links