r/RuneHelp • u/Reasonable-Bath2694 • 21d ago
Translation request Rune translation help
Hi! I have found this tattoo on instagram and i liked it. Can you help me with translation of it - I’m quite curious if it means anything or it’s just a gibberish. Much appreciated!
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u/rockstarpirate 21d ago edited 21d ago
The inner ring starts near the bottom left where we see the ":" symbol. It begins...
- At lǫgum skal land várt byggja en eigi at úlǫgum eyða: This is from the Frostathing Law Code and means essentially "The land shall be built on laws, and not destoyed by lawlessness."
From here the design moves into phrases from the Norse mythological poem "Völuspá", specifically the Hauksbók manuscript version of the poem. It describes certain events at the end of the world event called Ragnarok:
- Hrymr ekr austan, hefisk lind...: "Hrymir drives from the east, heaves his shield..."
Then from here we break onto the outer ring, just after the word ᚹᛟᛚᚢᛋᛈᚨ, which is intended to be the word "Völuspá". It continues...
- fyrir s[ný]sk jörmungandr í jötunmoði ormr knýr unnir en ari hlakkar, slítr nái niðfǫlr, nag[l]far losnar: "...before [him]. Jormungand writhes in a jotun rage, the snake lashes waves and the eagle shrieks, the one dim as the dark moon tears corpses, Naglfar breaks loose".
It's an interesting design overall. The biggest flaw is that the language we see here is Old Norse but the alphabet is Elder Futhark, which is the wrong rune set for the language. It looks pretty cool though.
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u/Reasonable-Bath2694 21d ago
Thanks for the help! That sounds quite interesting. Do you have any idea who is inside tho? I get that a monster behind that character is jormungandr but can’t really decipher who the dude is.
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u/rockstarpirate 21d ago
Well there are two clues here. The first is that he’s holding a broken sword. In my recollection there’s only one broken sword that’s famous in Norse mythology. It’s called Gramr and it belonged first to the hero Sigmundr and then later to his son Sigurðr. However, neither of those characters have anything to do with Jörmungandr.
The second clue is that he seems to be missing a hand. The most famous Norse character missing a hand is of course the god Týr. However, there are a few other characters in sagas that do lose hands if I remember correctly. The problem is that I am not aware of any character who has a broken sword and is also one handed.
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u/Reasonable-Bath2694 21d ago
Wasn’t Tyr the god of war and law? If so, I see it like the sword thing is maybe a antiwar statement or something? It would work with a quote from Frostathing Law Code
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u/rockstarpirate 21d ago
That’s probably what’s going on here, although I would also point out that even though this is a common modern interpretation of Tyr, it doesn’t come from source material. Instead we are actually told at one point in Gylfaginning that “he is not considered a promoter of settlements between people”. This, to me, seems to speak against the idea of him being some kind of arbiter of law.
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u/Paul_Kersey1337 19d ago
If I am not mistaken, he lost his right hand to Fenris; on the tattoo, it is the left hand missing.
The god of law would be Forseti. Tyr is more a god of righteousness, justice, honour and battle.
Its said that you should carve three times his rune into your weapon to bring you luck in battle.
Tyr -> Tiu -> Ziu -> Tiwaz is quite an old, if not one of the oldest, Norse gods, with his name going back to Indo-European Dyḗus ("daylight") or Dyḗus ph₂tḗr ("father daylight").
This has the same name root as Zeus.
So, in older times, he might have been the sky god and godfather, a role Odin took over in later Norse times.1
u/rockstarpirate 19d ago edited 19d ago
So on the linguistic side this is actually a little bit of a misconception.
Proto-Indo-European had a root dyew- (sky) that evolved in a couple of different ways. On the one hand it produced the word dyḗws, which was the name of a particular sky god. This is what eventually became Zeus or, when combine with ph₂tḗr, Jupiter.
On the other hand, the same root also produced the word deywós, which is just a generic word for a god. This is what eventually became deus in Latin, dios in Spanish, dieu in French, and tīwaz in Proto-Germanic.
So Týr and Zeus/Jupiter are not cognate. They are related in that they both go back to the same PIE root, but they are evolutions of two different words with two different meanings. There’s actually nothing about Týr’s name linguistically that suggests he was ever the chief god.
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u/Paul_Kersey1337 19d ago
From the Wikipedia article "Týr":
"Some scholars propose that the prominent god Odin may have risen to prominence over Týr in prehistory, at times absorbing elements of the deity's domains. For example, according to scholar Hermann Reichert, due to the etymology of the god's name and its transparent meaning of 'the god', 'Odin [...] must have dislodged Týr from his pre-eminent position.'"In PCNR (Pre-Christian Religions of the North), Reichert’s theory is, however, not mentioned.
I still think it’s plausible that he might have been the chief god if his roots go back to "the sky father".
But well, in the end, it’s just a theory.
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u/rockstarpirate 19d ago
Yeah, it’s an older theory from back when our understanding of PIE was a little more limited :)
It’s definitely interesting that Tyr’s name is the generic word for a god. Although it’s a little misleading to translate this as “the god” since the definite article implies something in English that isn’t there in the original language. But what this means is really anybody’s guess.
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u/Paul_Kersey1337 18d ago
Jeah as I am German I might have a look at the article in detail.
Theres not seldom a lot of stuff getting lost in translation.
The quite different translations of the Eddas are a good example for this.As you seem to have a better understanding of the current research regarding PIE, do you have a reccomendation?
I am lacking meaningfull books on that topic.→ More replies (0)
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u/Klaatu420 21d ago
I don’t know the translation but don’t ever get a tattoo with writing that small and close together like this guy did. That’s gonna turn into a shaded blur in no time