Tjurkö bracteate
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The Tjurkö Bracteates (DR BR75 U and DR BR76 U) are two bracteates (coins) found on Tjurkö, Eastern Hundred, Blekinge, Sweden, bearing Elder Futhark inscriptions, in Proto-Norse.
Tjurkö 1 or DR BR75 U, dated to between AD 400 and 650 (the Germanic Iron Age), now at the Swedish Museum of National Antiquities (SHM 1453:25). It is a typical C-bracteate, like the Vadstena bracteate showing a stylized head in the center, above a horse and beneath a bird. This iconograpy is usually interpreted as depicting an early form of Odin with his associated animals (horse and raven). The inscription reads
- ᚹᚢᚱᛏᛖᚱᚢᚾᛟᛉᚨᚾᚹᚨᛚᚺᚨᚲᚢᚱᚾᛖ··ᚺᛖᛚᛞᚨᛉᚲᚢᚾᛁᛗᚢᚾᛞᛁᚢ···
Transliteration:
- wurte runoz an walhakurne heldaz kunimudiu
Transcription:
- Wurte runoz an walhakurne Heldaz Kunimundiu
Translation:
- Heldaz wrought runes on 'the foreign grain' for Kunimunduz.
There is a consensus that walha-kurne is a compound word referring to the bracteate itself, and that walha (cognate with Modern English Welsh) means "foreign, non-Germanic" - here perhaps more specifically "Roman" or "Gallic". However, differing explanations have been proposed for the second element kurne. According to one interpretation (Looijenga 2003, p. 42), kurne is the dative singular of kurna (cognate with Modern English corn), and walha-kurne "Roman or Gallic grain" is a kenning for "gold"; cf. the compounds valhöll, valrauðr and valbaugar in the Old Norse poem Atlakviða. An alternative interpretation of the second element sees kurne as an early loan from Latin corona "crown" (Brate 1922, pp. 14-15), but this is unlikely ("crowns" as currency appear only in medieval times, from images of crowns minted on the coins' faces). The personal name Heldaz is derived from *held- "battle" (Old English hild, Old Norse hildr, etc.), while Kunimundiu (dative singular of Kunimunduz) is from kuni- "kin" (which appears with connotations of royalty as the first element of Old English compounds, cf. Modern English king) and mund- "protection".
Tjurkö 2, or DR BR76 U, is dated to the same period and has an inscription of just three runes, reading ota.
[edit] References
- Erik Brate, Sverges runinskrifter (1922) [1]
- Tineke Looijenga, Texts and Contexts of the Earliest Runic Inscriptions (2003).
- Rundata
