ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 3174 http://www.s-gabriel.org/3174 ************************************ 4 Sep 2006 From: Aryanhwy merch Catmael Greetings from the Academy of S. Gabriel! You wanted to know if is an appropriate name for a woman born in Iceland, who then went on to Greenland and then Vinland, around 1015AD. Here is what we have found. The standard scholarly Old Norse form of the given name is , where the / represents an acute accent over the previous letter, and {dh} is the letter edh, which looks like a backwards '6' with a cross-bar. [1] was in early use in Old West Scandinavian, spoken in Norway, Iceland, and Scandinavia's Atlantic colonies, being common in Norway through the whole of the Middle Ages, with a couple of instances as early as the 9th c. It was also fairly common in Iceland in the 10th and 11th c., though later it became much less common. [2] was pronounced roughly \AW-streedh(r)\, where \dh\ is the sound of in and the \(r)\ represents a softly voiced trill. As a byname the adjective seems usually to mean 'wise, often with the notion of prophetic visions', though the word also means 'quiet, gentle'. We found an example of the feminine byname 'the wise', borne by an Icelandic woman who died in 1031. [3] The definite article takes different forms for masculine and feminine names, and is a masculine form. The corresponding feminine form is , sometimes found in the variant form , especially in early manuscripts, but its oldest form is . Just as is a standardized scholarly form of the given name, is one standardized scholarly form of the feminine byname. (There are others, but this one seems most appropriate, since it corresponds perfectly to the likeliest runic spelling, which we give below.) The byname was pronounced roughly \hin SPAH-kah\. During this period, a Norse woman would have written her name in runes. The earliest runic inscription from Greenland is from Narssaq in the beginning of the 11th century, which can be seen here: http://arild-hauge.com/gronrune.htm The runes are a mixture of the futharks labelled 'SHORTTWIGS-RUNES FROM CA. 900 AD' and 'NORWEGIAN RUNES CA. 1000 - 1050 AD' at http://arild-hauge.com/enruner.htm If you can read the futhark off that middle stick, you'll have a set of runes that are about as authentic as possible for the persona in question. We believe that the most appropriate runic spelling of , using these runes, is , where is the fourth rune in the listing of Line B. In this same set of runes, we believe would have been spelled . [4] In sum, is a fine choice. In the runes we've recommend above, this name could have been spelled . We hope that this letter has been useful to you and that you won't hesitate to write us again if any part was unclear or if you have further questions. Research and commentary on this letter was provided by Maridonna Benvenuti, Aelfwynn Leoflaede dohtor, Juliana de Luna, Talan Gwynek, and Ines Alfon. For the Academy, -Aryanhwy merch Catmael, 04 September 2006 -- References: [1] Fleck, G. (aka Geirr Bassi Haraldsson), _The Old Norse Name_, Studia Marklandica (series) (Olney, Maryland: Yggsalr Press, 1977). [2] 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. A/stri/{dh}r [3] Lind, E.H., _Norsk-Isla"ndska Personbinamn fra*n Medeltiden_. (Uppsala: 1920-21), s.v. Spaka. [4] Hauge, Arild, "Norske Runeinnskrifter med de Yngre Runer" (WWW: Self-published, 2006) http://arild-hauge.com/innskrifter1.htm