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Jorn
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| Wile E. Coyote wrote: | Hmmm.
Intriguing. |
I guess the OE in stead of Intriguing, would have used weird.
And how did they measure a sea mile? The must have used dead reckoning, and when you look that up, you get this for the earliest method:
| A chip log consists of a wooden board attached to a line (the log-line). The log-line has a number of knots tied in it at uniform spacings. The log-line is wound on a reel to allow it to be paid out easily in use. |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_log
I don't know how much you know about Norse mythology, and I don't know if what is told in the Sagas can be trusted, but I am pretty certain that the ON and OE saw wyrd as the most important, as even the Gods were enthralled to the web of wyrd.
The Norns (Old Norse: norn, plural: nornir) in Norse mythology are female beings who rule the destiny of gods and men, a kind of disir comparable to the Fates in Greek mythology.
According to Snorri Sturluson's interpretation of the Völuspá, the three most important norns, Urðr (Wyrd), Verðandi and Skuld come out from a hall standing at the Well of Urðr (well of fate) and they draw water from the well and take sand that lies around it, which they pour over Yggdrasill so that its branches will not rot. These norns are described as three powerful maiden giantesses (Jotuns) whose arrival from Jötunheimr ended the golden age of the gods. They may be the same as the maidens of Mögþrasir who are described in Vafþrúðnismál who are described in Vafþrúðnismál (see below).
Etymology
Whereas the origin of the name norn is uncertain, it may derive from a word meaning "to twine" and which would refer to their twining the thread of fate (life line).
The name Urðr (Old English Wyrd, Weird) means "fate". It should be noted that wyrd and urðr are etymological cognates, which does not guarantee that wyrd and urðr share the same semantic quality of "fate" over time. Both Urðr and Verðandi are derived from the Old Norse verb verða, "to be". While Urðr derives from the past tense ("that which became or happened" [[color=green]what were]), Verðandi derives from the present tense of verða("that which is happening"). Skuld is derived from the Old Norse verb skole/skulle, "need/ought to be/shall be"; its meaning is "that which should become, or that needs to occur"[/color] |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norns
The green comments are mine, and I think it is as simple as "what was" determines "what is", that again determines "what shall be".
Ygg is supposed to be a name for Odin, drasil is supposed to have meant a horse, and it was in the world ash Yggdrasil, that Odin hung himself for 9 days in order to gain knowledge of the workings of wyrd, and how you could control it with runes.
Nowhere is a world tree mentioned, the word used is ash, and even today can egg somebody on in English.
Odin's goal by hanging himself to gain knowledge, was to create enough war and strife, that is dead heroes, so that the Gods did not lose Ragnarök. Because of Odin's sacrifice, and all the dead heroes fighting it, Ragnarök will become a draw, and the world will be reforged rather than go under. The whole cycle then restarts with new Gods, and both good and evil people will survive, so that the world becomes repopulated once again.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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Just a reminder...
This isn't the "Jorn" message board. Try not to write the King James Bible every day.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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The viking calendar is proving difficult to crack, instead of going with my instinct (see my last post) I hit on the unoriginal idea of a google search and in no time at all came across all sorts of false pathways.
So far I have wasted a day learning and unlearning about the scholar Vaster Gudmundsson who believed that the Norse had a five day week which he used in his theoretical reconstruction of the ancient Scandinavian calendar.
Gudmundsson does however make a good case for the sideral rather than a synodic month.
If I only had more confidence etc...
The answer was staring me in the face.
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Jorn
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| Wile E. Coyote wrote: |
The answer was staring me in the face. |
I've done some reading on this, and I think all the stuff with the sideral or synodic month is too complicated.
The time from spring(tide) to spring(tide) or neap to neap is roughly 14 days. (neap = Norwegian nipp=small sip of fluid)
From spring to neap is seven days, where it turns, thus the name week and the 7 days.
According to the Norwegian Tide Authorizes, you could measure the tide over a 19 year period, and see that cycle returns. I no have idea if this is simple or not, but I guess it is simpler than measuring the moon.
A special feature of this kind in the Old Norse and Icelandic language is the concept of eykt in the sense of an eighth of the 24 hr long day. The word "eykt" may be etymologically related to the number eight, a point to which we will return later. Hence, we may have an extra reason for picking the natural English translation of octant. The octants of day and night have special names as shown in table
Corresponding to these eight time points of the day Old Norse operated with the term átt/ætt in the meaning of an octant of the circle or, in particular, of the horizon.(11)
http://www.raunvis.hi.is/~thv/t_t.html |
The eykt was further divided into three stund-e, as is still used for hour in some Norwegian dialects. You also find many local place names where the sun is over a local feature in the landscape at one of these eyks, like mid-dags-berg etc.
I don't think it is an accident that the old Futhark had 24 runes, divided in three átt-er.
I have also read some anglo-saxon dictionaries lately, and there are words for the tenth day, twentieth day etc. From the vocabulary I have seen, it looks like the Old English vocabulary was built up very similar to the Norse, but sometimes using different roots, like egg where the Norse use Island (ey).
The original name for the metals also seem to have been the same, and the old name for bronze/copper is similarly called eir. The green patina of "eir" is called "irr" in Scandinavian, and it was the early alchemists that changed "luft"- loft to "air" in English.
The name for Eng-land in Scandinavian directly means "meadow"land, pretty fitting from what I have seen of the country, while Ireland then becomes copper-land. The French name for "irr" is verdigris, and some philologists on the net thinks green comes from "air" as well.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Jorn wrote: | | I think all the stuff with the sideral or synodic month is too complicated. |
Way to go... ideas are often obvious (when you see them)
| Jorn wrote: | The time from spring(tide) to spring(tide) or neap to neap is roughly 14 days. (neap = Norwegian nipp=small sip of fluid)
From spring to neap is seven days, where it turns, thus the name week and the 7 days.
According to the Norwegian Tide Authorizes, you could measure the tide over a 19 year period, and see that cycle returns. I no have idea if this is simple or not, but I guess it is simpler than measuring the moon. |
I thought about bringing in tides, cant make it work though.
| Jorn wrote: | A special feature of this kind in the Old Norse and Icelandic language is the concept of eykt in the sense of an eighth of the 24 hr long day.
...........The eykt was further divided into three stund-e, as is still used for hour in some Norwegian dialects. You also find many local place names where the sun is over a local feature in the landscape at one of these eyks, like mid-dags-berg etc.
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The geographic features are used to tell the time, by dividing the day into eights....
Ok but is it "special" ..........eykt =eight.
ein "one"
tveir "two"
þrÃr "three"
fjórir "four"
fimm "five"
sex "six"
sjau "seven"
átta "eight"
nÃu "nine"
tÃu "ten"
They are basically the same.
8 is followed by 9. Nine is clearly a no! type of word. So your folks in many cultures are counting to eight, then STOPPING.
The Assyrian/Christian calendar was also based round the concept of the three hour "watch" so again three x eight =24 hour day.
Which leads you to believe that many folks were probably using geographic features to tell the time as well as.........get your copy of ME now.
| Jorn wrote: | | I have also read some anglo-saxon dictionaries lately, and there are words for the tenth day, twentieth day etc. From the vocabulary I have seen, it looks like the Old English vocabulary was built up very similar to the Norse, but sometimes using different roots, like egg where the Norse use Island (ey). |
Bede gives a description of how the ancient calendar worked...
It's totally confusing.
You might want to check out the similarities between seasons. They both worked on the basis of a two season year. Maybe the word for year was winter in both?
Winterfylle� and the Old Norse Veturn�tur
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I like the tide theory for one simple reason: it actually has some practical application, unlike the bleedin moon stuff (no Vagisilian pun intended).
Two simple reasons: tides feature heavily in a book I am starting in the AEL's Own Books section tomorrow. So no sleep for you lot tonight!
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | I like the tide theory for one simple reason: it actually has some practical application, unlike the bleedin moon stuff |
Mon ami, is a little moon sick, non ?
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Jorn
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| Wile E. Coyote wrote: |
Way to go... ideas are often obvious (when you see them) |
The more I read about the tide and its 14 day period, the more obvious it becomes that it is important for two reasons.
Sailing
Before you got efficient sails, tides were a great help in sailing from A to B. Isn't there an expression on rowing against the tide, as something futile?
Fishing and beachcombing
The ebb and flow of the tide has a profound influence on how fish feed and move, whether from the shore, inshore or in deeper waters offshore. An angler who makes the effort to understand this cycle will consistently catch more than the one who trusts to pot luck, says Russ Symons
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link
| Wile E. Coyote wrote: | Ok but is it "special" ..........eykt =eight.
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I agree, it is special. You also find egg moon as a name of the full moon in English, and eight could have this root.
| Wile E. Coyote wrote: | | Winterfylle� and the Old Norse Veturn�turten |
I have done some more reading, and it looks to me that months is something that came with Christianity and its saints. The ON and OE seem to have used names for the full moons in stead.
Full moon names
The full moon, as observed from Earth on a clear night.
It is traditional to assign special names to each full moon of the year, though the rules that determine the name for a given month's full moon has changed over time (e.g., the blue moon).
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The following table gives the traditional English names for each month's full moon, the names given by Algonquian peoples in the northern and eastern United States...
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_moon
List over old Danish names for the full moons are found if you press Dansk on wikipedia. (the link contains an å, so it doesn't work)
also worth looking at, once in a blue moon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_moon
If you did not use the month to reckon the year, but counted weeks from equinoxes instead, you could still use the moon to reckon the tides.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Jorn wrote: |
The more I read about the tide and its 14 day period, the more obvious it becomes that it is important for two reasons.
Sailing
Before you got efficient sails, tides were a great help in sailing from A to B. Isn't there an expression on rowing against the tide, as something futile?
Fishing and beachcombing
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Well I can add something......
Yer Northmen counted their days or maybe nights of the week ... (winter nights)
Yer English did not...........
Or did they?
We might have a linguistic example in the "fortnight" (14 nights)
In Welsh, though use the term pythefnos (15 nights).......
So maybe we were all originally counting?
| Jorn wrote: |
The ebb and flow of the tide has a profound influence on how fish feed and move, whether from the shore, inshore or in deeper waters offshore. An angler who makes the effort to understand this cycle will consistently catch more than the one who trusts to pot luck, says Russ Symons
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Same applies to the moon and hunting deer.
Muckle ("bleeeding moon") Hardrick, clearly was a drover or a shaman!
or....hungry.....
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Jorn
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| Wile E. Coyote wrote: |
So maybe we were all originally counting?
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It is quite obvious when you think about it, that you needed to be able to tally before you reckon time and tide.
I am trying to understand how the Celtic Yan tan tethera counting worked, as it looks to be common to the whole Celtic world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_tan_tethera
I also found this article: "The Vikings were shiftworkers!" where it is explained that to go Viking, is from the time before sailing, and simply meant that you went with a double crew.
The author is still stuck in the primacy of the middle east, but the article is interesting, as it offers new clues and some good arguments.
The seven days of the time measure "week" has its origin in the Middle East and it is assumed that the seven days reflects the four moon phases. This is probably true, but the Germanic name for this time measure is different from the Latin, which usually is the pattern. In Latin languages the name of this time measure is actually "seven days", not "shift"! Therefore I mean that it is disputable whether "week" (Old Norse "vika") stands for the astronomic shift. It might simply stand for the visual break or "turn" of the first wooden calendar sticks. In Swedish "fold" is "vika", one "viker" a sheet of paper. In the same way, it is possible that one after having carved the seventh notch turned the calendar stick in order to get a better overview of a longer period of time!
Carving in wooden sticks has been used long time before people generally could read and write. In Norway they are known as "karvestokke" and in the Swedish speaking parts of Finland "skorstickor". This is close to the English "score" (meaning "20" |
http://www.abc.se/~pa/publ/vikshift.htm
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Cripes.... I was looking at 13 and 14........and now have a confession to make.....
The Tolowa of Northern California had 15 moons........
That is until I (Coyote), worried that there were too many, attacked them. I killed 2, and wounded 1, leaving 12 healthy moons and 1 wounded.
12.41 lunations in a solar year?
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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12 +1 wounded moon...... is the story of the resurrection of christ.... is he dead/no he is alive....he rises this time!
Unlucky 13 is common across cultures.
What have I done?
Coyote is going to be howling at the moon tonight.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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I have a suspicion that the een in thirteen should mean eve same as in St Hallows eve....halloween
So the counting system originally developed round daylight hours.?
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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12 discs.... 12 disciples......
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Jorn
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| Wile E. Coyote wrote: | I have a suspicion that the een in thirteen should mean eve same as in St Hallows eve....halloween
So the counting system originally developed round daylight hours.? |
From what I have seen, northern people did not divide the day in 12 hours, but rather the day+night first in eight, then the eights in three, giving you 24 hours.
The Christian Latins divided the day and night in 12 hours, and measured noon at 12.
For sailors and people living where there are large tides, the difference between the height of the sun at 9 and 3 (15), compared to its highest at 12, would have been far more practical as the tide repeats in roughly 12 and half hours.
If you live on the Arctic Circle, calculating the hours becomes child's play as you could follow the sun for 24 hours in summer, and the stars for 24 hours in winter, while the 12 daylight hours and 12 night hours becomes meaningless.
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