[Regia-NA] futhark numbers
Arthur
shutterbug49 at att.net
Thu Dec 2 23:25:35 EST 2004
Thank you very much for the information. It helps. I will have to check out
those websites when I get the time. I heard that one thing wrong with the
Kensington Stone is that the numbers are not right. I can't remember very
well but the book seemed to indicate that there was a correct way of doing
it and the Kensington Stone was not right. I think the book was "Vikings,
the North Atlantic Saga" but I am not sure.
Thanks again,
Kjartan.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jack Garrett [SMTP:garrett at pacbell.net]
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2004 2:28 PM
To: list-Regia-NA
Subject: Re: [Regia-NA] futhark numbers
Kjartan,
I've had the same question for years, and still don't have a good answer.
I have a half-dozen books on runes, but none addresses how numbers would
have been written. The inscriptions on stones that I've seen just don't
mention numbers at all.
However...
The one stone that does have numbers - and dates - is the Kensington Stone,
found in Minnesota in 1898. It's generally regarded as a fake, but those
who translated the runes carved on the stone seemed to have little trouble
deciphering the number runes and the numbering system used. Frustratingly,
I've yet to see those runes described anywhere outside the Kensington Stone
context. Here's a site that shows the runes and their translation:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/6726/kensington/kenrunes.htm
There is a method of carving runes that seems to be close to the number
runes on the Kensington Stone. It uses their "ett" placement (that's
"aett", if it looks odd after bouncing around various email systems).
Here's a site that shows that:
http://www.ancientscripts.com/futhark.html
I thought at one point that the Kensington number runes might be borrowed
from Ogham/Ogam Celtic alphabet, but they're not really close to that
either.
The Kensington runes seem to use a Roman Numeral system for what has been
translated to be "22 Norwegians", showing two "double five" runes followed
by why I think are two "two" runes. Yet, the date, 1362, is shown in
proper Arabic tens position manner with runes for 1, 3, 6 and 2. What does
this all mean? I haven't a clue. It's supposed to be a fake, after all.
So ... I'm still looking. Sorry this doesn't help much. Anyone else?
Ottar Lei?arstjarna
Jack Garrett
Alamo, California
Arthur <shutterbug49 at att.net> wrote:
Greetings,
I was wondering if the futhark had a number system. I would like to be able
to write numbers without having to write the word for the number.
Thanks,
Fare thee well.
Kjartan.
Brian Lathrop, Colorado Springs.
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