Ur (rune)
| Name | Proto-Germanic | Old English | Old Norse | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| *Ūruz/*Ūrą | Ūr | Ȳr | Úr | stung Úr | |
| "aurochs"/"water" | "aurochs" | ? | “windy, cold drizzle/snowfall” “dross” | ||
| Shape | Elder Futhark | Futhorc | Younger Futhark | ||
 | |  | |  | |
| Unicode | ᚢ U+16A2 | ᚢ U+16A2 | ᚣ U+16A3 | ᚢ U+16A2 | ᚤ U+16A4 |
| Transliteration | u | u | y | u | y |
| Transcription | u | u | y | u, o, y, œ w / v | y, œ v |
| IPA | [u(ː)] | [u(ː)] | [y(ː)] | [u] ⓘ [ø] ⓘ [y] ⓘ [œ] ⓘ [v] ⓘ [w] ⓘ | [y] ⓘ [œ] ⓘ [v] ⓘ |
| Position in rune-row | 2 | 2 | 27 | 2₁ | 2₂ |
Ur is the recorded name for the rune ᚢ in both Old English and Old Norse, found as the second rune in all runic alphabets (futharks), i.e. Germanic Elder Futhark, Anglo-Frisian Futhark and Norse Younger Futhark. It corresponds to the letter u in the Latin alphabet, but also carries other sound values, especially in Younger Futhark, were its sound values correspond to the vowels: [u] ⓘ, [ø] ⓘ, [y] ⓘ and [œ] ⓘ etc., and the consonants: [v] ⓘ and [w] ⓘ etc., in the Latin alphabet.
It may have been derived from the Raetic alphabet character u as it is similar in both shape and sound value. It is also found as the 16th letter in the Gothic alphabet (𐌿), the corresponding name being urus.
Elder name
[edit]The rune is recorded in all three rune poems (Old English, Norwegian, Icelandic), and it is called Ur in all, however with different meanings in each.[1]
Because of this, it is difficult to reconstruct a Proto-Germanic name for the Elder Futhark rune. It may have been *ūruz "aurochs" (see also Bull worship), based on the Old English rune poem, the oldest recorded of the three, or *ūrą "water", based on the Icelandic rune poems (and to some extent the Norwegian rune poem),[2] with both Proto-Germanic words, however, possibly stemming from the same root.[3]
The aurochs name is preferred by authors of modern runic divination systems, but both seem possible, compared to the names of the other runes: "water" would be comparable to "hail" and "lake", and "aurochs" to "horse" or "elk" (although the latter name is itself uncertain). The Gothic alphabet seems to support "aurochs" as the prior name, though: as the name of the letter 𐌿 u is urus.
Old English rune poem
[edit]In the Old English rune poem, recorded in the 8th or 9th century, the rune is named Ūr, Old English for “aurochs” (compare with Old Norse: úrr),[3] stemming from a Proto-Germanic word: *ūruz.
| Old English: | ᚢ [Ur] bẏþ anmod ond oferhẏrned, felafrecne deor, feohteþ mid hornum mære morstapa; þæt is modig ƿuht. |
|---|---|
| Paraphrased: | The aurochs is proud and has great horns; it is a very savage beast and fights with its horns; a great ranger of the moors, it is a creature of mettle. |
Norwegian rune poem
[edit]In the Norwegian rune poem, recorded in the 13th century, the rune is named úr, with the Old Norwegian meaning of “dross, slag”. This sense is obscure, but may be an Iron Age technical term derived from the word for water (compare the Kalevala, where iron is compared to milk).
| Old Norwegian: | ᚢ Úr er af illu jarne; opt løypr ræinn á hjarne. |
|---|---|
| Literal: | Dross/Slag is of ill iron; often leap (strut) the reindeer over the frozen snow. |
Icelandic rune poems
[edit]In the Icelandic rune poems, recorded in the 16th century, the rune is named úr, an Old Norse word describing some type of cold damp and windy precipitation weather.
There are several Icelandic manuscripts with rune poems, all varying to some degree. The oldest manustript, catalogued as AM 687 d 4°, is from around 1500. The second oldest, catalogued as AM 461 12° , is from around 1550. These have been noted to be hard to read, thus the transliterations might be incorrect.[4]
AM 687 d 4°
[edit]AM687d, written around 1500, has lost a lot of readability due to the pergament being folded and damaged over the years, but copies have been made since the 18th century.[5] The original scribe used diacritic abbreviation symbols to save space,[5][6] which are hard to make out at a first glance.[7] These symbols are based on period Arabic numerals,[6] but are hard to identify, yet appear to be the following, or thereof: -r⁰, -ar¹, -ur², -er³, -re⁴/-ræ⁴, -ra⁵.[7][5] The poem ends with a Latin phrase of unknown meaning.
Below, a attempt at recreating the original text with available Unicode-characters is shown, as to convey how hard the original text is to read.[7] Letter sequences that cannot now be identified are inserted, for convenience of reading, within square brackets [ ], on the evidence either of the available space or of related texts.[5]
| Original text: | ᚢ 𝑒⁰ ꞅ𝔨𝑦𝑔𝜄𝑎 𝑔⁵𝑡𝑢ꝛ ƻ ꞅ𝔨æꝛ𝑎 þ𝑢³[rir ok] h𝜄ꝛꝺ𝜄ẞ h𝑎𝑡² 𝒱𝔪𝑏ꝛ𝑒 𝒱𝜄Ꞅ𝜄 |
|---|---|
| Normalized: | Úr er skýgia[a] grátur ok skæra þverrir ok hirðis hatur. Umbre Vísi. |
| Literal: | Úr is overcast crying, and cuts diagonally across, and shepherd's hatred. Umbre Vísi? |
| Paraphrased: | Drizzle is the cloud cover's weeping, and falls diagonally across; a hatred of the shepherd. Umbre Vísi? |
AM 461 12°
[edit]AM461 is slightly younger than AM687d, written around 1550, and less complete, lacking ᛦ [Ýr] for example. It has been noted by American Old Norse scholar Jackson Crawford to be very difficult to make out.[4]
| Normalized: | ᚢ Úr er skýja grátur og skárargs gata, þorir? og hirðis hatur, siðförull seggur. |
|---|---|
| Literal: | Drizzle is skies crying and skárargs? path, the daring? and shepherd's hatred, the late traveling man.? |
Etymology
[edit]Úr is related to Old English: ēar, "wave, sea", potentially also "urine".[8] It stems from a Proto-Germanic word: *ūrą, possibly begun by a w-, as found in related words (Swedish: var, "pus", Old English: wær, "sea") and historical variants of úr (Old Swedish: vur),[8] as Proto-Germanic words starting with a w, followed by o or u, generally lost the w-sound when evolving from Proto-Norse into Old Norse (compare Proto-Germanic: *wulfaz, "wolf", Old Norse: ulfr).[9]
The definition of úr warries between the Nordic languages. In Old Icelandic, the word (úr) is recorded as meaning "drizzle", "light rain" and thereof, in the sense of "cold and damp weather".[10][11][8] In Old and Contemporary Swedish, the word (ur) essentially means "blustery and profuse snowfall, sleet or rain" etc, if not outright "bad weather".[8] In Danish and Norwegian, the word (ur) is said to mean "northern rainclouds",[8] or just "rainclouds", but also "cold, biting draft" and thereof etc.[12] There is also a variant, ýr (yr), in all Nordic languages, meaning "drizzle" in Old Icelandic,[13] including "fine dense snowfall" and "snowstorm" in Norwegian and Swedish.[14][15] A derivative, yra, a verb, also exist, meaning "to drizzle" and thereof in Old Icelandic,[13][16] and "swirl, whirl, drift", in the sense of snow, sand, dust affected by the wind, in Swedish, etc.[17]
Variants
[edit]ᚣ (Ȳr) – Anglo-Frisian Futhorc
[edit]The Anglo-Frisian Futhark has a modified Ūr ᚢ, fitted with a detached vertical line in the cavity ᚣ, which was given the sound value [y] ⓘ. It was named Ȳr and corresponded to the letter y in the Latin alphabet.
Its position in the Anglo-Frisian rune-row differs between sources and was probably never standardised, but today it is generally placed at position 27.
ᚤ (stung Úr) – Norse Younger Futhark
[edit]In the 11th century, a new writing rule was introduced to the Younger Futhark, in the form of stung runes (also called dotted runes), in which stings, i.e. dots, could be added to a rune to indicate a secondary sound value.
The stung Úr ᚤ primarily carried the sound value [y] ⓘ and corresponds to the letter y in the Latin alphabet (unicode name: Runic Letter Y), but it also carries the sound value [œ] ⓘ and seldom even [v] ⓘ, the latter of which was also carried by the stung Fé ᚡ (unicode name: Runic Letter V). During this late Younger Futhark period, the sound value [y] was synonymously carried by the rune Yr ᛦ, as its previous sound value, [ʀ] ⓘ, was given to the rune Reið ᚱ. In the following medieval runic alphabet, the sound value [œ] ⓘ was covered by its own rune, a reversed Óss ᚯ (unicode: Runic Letter Oe).
Stung runes are not separate runes from their base form in the Futhark order and thus has the same positions as their main counterpart. In the medieval runic alphabet they instead has the position of their corresponding Latin character.
Footnotes
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Original poems and translation from the Rune Poem Page Archived 1999-05-01 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ Page, R.I. (2005). Runes, page 15. The British Museum Press ISBN 0-7141-8065-3
- ^ a b "ur subst.1". saob.se (in Swedish). Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB). 2012. Retrieved 2024-07-02.
- ^ a b Crawford, Jackson. "The Icelandic Rune Poem". youtube.com. Retrieved 2024-07-18.
- ^ a b c d Page, R. I. "The Icelandic Rune-Poem.pdf" (PDF). vsnrweb-publications.org.uk. Retrieved 2024-01-02.
- ^ a b "The Chameleon Quality of Scribal Conventions". voynichportal.com. Retrieved 2024-01-02.
- ^ a b c "AM 687 d". myndir.handrit.is. Retrieved 2024-01-02.
- ^ a b c d e "ur subst.2". saob.se (in Swedish). Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB). 2012. Retrieved 2024-07-02.
- ^ "Ulv och varg". ordbruket.com (in Swedish). Archived from the original on 2009-09-27. Retrieved 2024-07-18.
- ^ Cleasby, Richard; Gudbrand Vigfusson; Dasent, George Webbe (1874). An Icelandic-English dictionary, based on the ms. collections of the late Richard Cleasby. Enl. and completed by Gudbrand Vigfússon. With an introd. and life of Richard Cleasby by George Webbe Dasent. p. 669. Retrieved 2024-07-18.
- ^ Cleasby, Richard; Gudbrand Vigfusson (1910). A concise dictionary of old Icelandic. p. 460. Retrieved 2024-07-18.
- ^ "ur". Bokmålsordboka | Nynorskordboka.
- ^ a b Cleasby, Richard; Gudbrand Vigfusson; Dasent, George Webbe (1874). An Icelandic-English dictionary, based on the ms. collections of the late Richard Cleasby. Enl. and completed by Gudbrand Vigfússon. With an introd. and life of Richard Cleasby by George Webbe Dasent. p. 669. Retrieved 2024-07-18.
- ^ "ur". Bokmålsordboka | Nynorskordboka.
- ^ "yr subst". saob.se (in Swedish). Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB). 2021. Retrieved 2024-07-18.
- ^ Cleasby, Richard; Gudbrand Vigfusson (1910). A concise dictionary of old Icelandic. p. 460. Retrieved 2024-07-18.
- ^ "yra v.1". saob.se (in Swedish). Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB). 2021. Retrieved 2024-07-18.