Sunday, January 18, 2009

My mark revisited, and a petition to bring back Lördag.

Awhile back I posted a drawing of my mark. Today I finally took a photo of it (above). It was made with (small and large) paper clip wire pieces super glued to the back of a stray clear cap I found. To the right is an impression I made in leather hard clay. The letters are younger futhark, which was the alphabet of the Scandinavian people from the 9th century until the 15th century when it evolved into a medieval proto-norse runic writing system. Eventually, as the influence of Christianity grew, the medieval runic alphabet came into competition with the Latin systems used by the clergy. It was and is still common to use runes for calendar's in Scandinavia. We still have remnants in our modern daily lives, such as Tuesday (Tyr's day), Wednesday (Woten's day),Thursday (Thor's day), and Friday (Freyja's day). Saturday in Scandinavian tradition was actually called Lördag (which means bath day -- good idea). And, then Sunday (sun) and Monday (moon) we seemed to share with the rest of Europe.

1 comment:

Gary's third pottery blog said...

farthek! HA! You kinda wanna say "farthak you, buddy!"