I'm so exited that you guys like it
''Fun fact'' The danish government recently decided that you can no longer study ''Old Norse'' in Denmark.
X-Ray
I don't know if you find any of this interesting. But heres a bit of 2 writings about it.
Translated writing:
Erased and written out in one go
Although the runes are very well formed and immediately easy to read, we have problems understanding the text.
This is due, firstly, to the fact that the bracteate is very worn, so that the runes in important places are almost completely gone. Secondly, the inscription is written out in one run.
That is, there is no pause between words, nor are there any signs showing where one word ends and the next begins.
In addition, the language on the bracteate is more than 1,500 years old.
On the trail of a hunter
The first part of the text of the bracteate is particularly difficult, because there are partly words we do not know from other sources, partly words which do not seem to fit with the developments of linguistic history.
The inscription possibly begins with the word
hostiōz, which can mean 'sacrificial animal' (in the plural). In that case, it is a Latin loanword, which would mean that the word hostia was borrowed from Latin and embedded in the Old Norse language.
In the long sequence that follows, there is probably a declaration that someone is helping a hunt or a hunter.
We may also encounter a personal or nickname Jaga, which may even have been perceived as a pun on the verb 'to hunt'.
A king's locket?
We are most certain of the last part of the inscription. It says
iz Wōd[a]nas weraz, which can be translated as 'he is Odin's man'.
But who is this man of Odin? It must be the hunter who may have had the (nick)name Jaga.
And who is the hunter or Jaga?
We know that Saxo calls the images on bracteates kings, and we know that the bracteates imitate Roman emperor depictions.
We must therefore interpret the inscription as a presentation of the depicted person, who is the king.
The king is referred to as Odin's man, which points to his divine legitimacy, and perhaps also tells us that he is the supreme cult leader of society.
What does the image universe on the bracts mean?
We now know over 1,100 golden bracteaters. Most have been found in the Nordic countries, where they were invented in the middle of the 4th century, and from here they were spread mainly to England and Germany.
Ever since people began to take an interest in the bracteates in the 17th century, they have used Norse mythology to interpret the images.
In particular, the motif with a large man's head above a horse or other four-legged animal has been interpreted as Odin, but also as Thor or other gods.
Often one or more birds appear on the motif, and here you have wanted to see Odin's ravens, Hugin and Munin.
Others have criticized this interpretation – can one allow oneself to interpret a single bird as one of Odin's two ravens? And isn't it rather an eagle? If the man's face represents Odin, why doesn't the horse below him have eight legs?
Stories of magic and rituals
Around 1970, two German researchers put forward two different arguments that the motif with a man's face and horse represented Odin.
Karl Hauck took his point of departure from an old German chant, the so-called II. Merseburger formula (see 'C-bracteaters in Vindelev' in Skalk).
It tells - in somewhat obscure language - a myth about how Wotan (Odin) heals Balder's injured horse. Hauck believed that the animal on the bracteates was injured and that the humanoid figure was performing a magical ritual to heal it.
The ritual is described by another healing formula called 'Ad equum errehet': "Draw your hand along the horse's side, blow into its ear, and step on its right foot".
On one of the bracts from Vindelev, we actually see a human hand on the horse's neck and a human foot by one of its front legs, and one of the runic inscriptions on it means 'The High One' - one of the many nicknames Odin appears under in the Viking Age.
An Odin shaman?
The archaeologist Detlev Ellmers, on the other hand, believed that the horse should be seen as a sacrificial animal, decorated with headdresses and bands around the belly, as was usual for sacrificial animals in the Roman Empire.
The face above the animal was the recipient of the sacrifice, namely Odin.
In the 1990s, Lotte Hedeager, an archeology professor in Oslo, put forward a third theory that the motif with the animal and the human face showed a shamanic spiritual journey, where the animal was the shaman's helper spirit. Odin was the divine shaman and therefore the one depicted here with the animal.
Common to the mentioned theories, however, is that Odin seems to play an important role.
Or not Odin at all?
The many theories reflect that, according to the sources, Odin is a very complex god – god of both magic, death, war, wisdom, wealth, kingship and poetry – and that interpreting 1,500-year-old images is naturally a somewhat uncertain affair.
There are also researchers who believe that it could just as well be pictures of earthly persons, kings or chiefs.
This is, for example, the interpretation that runologist Lisbeth Imer and linguist Krister Vasshus lean towards in their analysis of the runes on the oldest Odin bracts from the Vindelev hoard.
There is nothing that clearly shows that it is Odin - the face is always in profile, so we cannot see, for example, if he has only one eye.
And can we even be sure whether the Odin of the 5th century was perceived in the same way as the Odin of the Viking Age, whom we know best through sources from the Christian Middle Ages?
Both a king and Odin?
The runes on the Vindelev bracteates suggest - according to the researchers behind - that the man in the picture is 'Odin's man', perhaps a king or another rich and powerful person.
But this need not rule out the fact that Odin is also depicted, because it cannot be denied that the king identified himself with the supreme god in many ways.
At that time, the king was also the high priest, so the picture can in theory depict both parts. On the bracteates there are quite a few personal names, but Odin had, until now, never been mentioned directly.
The new thing about the Vindelev find is that the text is so clear and early that it is the oldest inscription of the name Odin that we know of.
Maybe a protective amulet
In the past, people have also wondered if the runes refer to something outside the images.
For example, a common runic word on the bracteates is ALU. It is the same word as 'øl' in modern Danish and 'ale' in English.
One can actually see a person with a drinking horn on one of the Vindelev bracteates, but otherwise drinking horns or glasses are extremely rare on bracteates.
Perhaps ALU alludes more to concepts such as ceremony, like today's 'grave beer', but it may be even more relevant that ALU can also be interpreted as 'protection'.
This contributes to the theory that the bracteates also functioned as amulets - a function many would like to attribute to the bracteates.
It also explains that the word can also appear on weapons, burial urns and runestones.
Links:
https://videnskab.dk/forskerzonen/kultur-samfund/verdens-aeldste-odin-fundet-i-vindelev
https://videnskab.dk/forskerzonen/kultur-samfund/hvem-ejede-vindelevskatten-og-hvorfor-blev-den-gravet-ned
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