ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2498 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2498 ************************************ 26 Feb 2002 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked whether or is an appropriate name for a man in Norway during the mid-Viking period. This letter is a brief answer to your question. is a late-period form of an Old Norse name best spelled . The slash represents an acute accent mark on the preceding letter. The final <-r> is a grammatical ending, indicating that this is the nominative form of the name. (The nominative form of a name is the one used in the subject of a sentence or in direct address.) The final <-r> is barely pronounced, just a lightly voiced trill, not a separate syllable. We have found several examples of the name in the period you want to re-create [1]: Knvtr bondi aa Knvtzst{o,}dum, 10th century Knu/tr a/ Ho/li, c.1000 Gv{dh}mvndr prestr Cnvts son, c.1140 {TH}orgri/mr Knu/ts son, 1184 The symbol {o,} represents an with a backward-comma-shaped hook hanging from the bottom. {dh} stands for the letter edh, written as a backward <6> with a crossbar on the upper limb; and {TH} is the letter thorn, written as a lower

with a vertical stroke that extends upward as far as it does downward. The last two examples show two versions of "Knut's son"; but the spelling we recommend is [3]. is an equally good given name for your period; note the grammatical ending here as well [2], so we can recommend either or as excellent Viking names. They were pronounced \KNOOT(r) KNOOTS sohn\ and \OWE-lahv(r) KNOOTS sohn\. In both pronunciations, \oh\ stands for the vowel in , and \(r)\ for a lightly voiced trill. In your period, the Viking wrote with runes. In this letter, we've recommended standard scholarly Roman-alphabet spellings; but you may prefer to write your name authentically. We can't show you runes here, but you can see several versions of the runic alphabet on the web: http://www.arild-hauge.com/enruner.htm The one labeled Norwegian-Danish Runes from the 800s is a good choice. Notice that these tables identify each rune with a Roman letter. We will use that labeling in this letter to give you the runic spelling of your name. We should stress that this is a modern scholarly convention, not a notation that would have been used in our period. In that system, the two names we've recommended can be spelled or and or . Following the lead of the web page, we're using here to represent the 5th rune and for the 16th. We hope this brief letter has been useful. Please write us again if you have any questions. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter by Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Talan Gwynek, and Lindorm Eriksson. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 26 Feb 2002 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] Lind, E.H., _Norsk-Isla:ndska Dopnamn ock Fingerade Namn fra*n Medeltiden_ (Uppsala & Leipzig: 1905-1915, sup. Oslo, Uppsala and Kobenhavn: 1931), s.n. Knu/tr. [2] Aryanhwy merch Catmael, "Viking Names found in the Landna/mabo/k" (WWW: privately published, 1998). http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/landnamabok.html. [3] Lind consistently uses after dental consonants; since the root ends in , he has here. \z\ normally represents the sound \ts\. Lind's citations show as perhaps the most common variant, especially in the earlier ones; also occurs, as do and . There are of course also spellings with .