ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1701 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1701 ************************************ From: "Brian M. Scott" 19 Jun 1999 Greetings from the Academy of S. Gabriel! You asked whether a woman born into Norse society in Hedeby, Denmark, in the year 893 would have used the name element <-dottir>. Specifically, you wanted to use it in the name . You also asked about arms, describing them as 'Azure chief, Vert base, bar Sable, a mullet of nine points Or' and supplying an emblazon. I'll discuss the name first, then the arms. Your question about <-dottir> is actually more complicated than you probably realized. The Old Norse word 'daughter' was indeed used in forming patronymics, i.e., names indicating relationship to one's father. (The slash stands for an acute accent over the preceding letter.) However, Old Norse wasn't written in Latin letters until a couple of centuries after your period, so is really a later written form of a word that probably hadn't changed much since the late 9th century. In your period the name would have been written in runes; I'll return to this after discussing the name itself. For now I'll follow the normal scholarly practice of using standardized spellings based on 12th and 13th century Old Norse usage. is a slight misspelling of the modern Norwegian name , which in turn comes from the feminine Old Norse name . (Here {o|} stands for an with a slash through it, and stands for an with a reversed comma dangling from its lower edge.) The name is a little problematic: so far as we can discover, prior to the 19th century the only person recorded as having borne the name is the mother of the legendary 'Sigurd Fafnir's bane'. [1, 2, 3] We found no genuinely historical instance of the name until modern times. On the other hand, its second element, <-di/s>, is fairly common in Old Norse feminine names, and the first element, , occurs in several historical names. [4] Thus, while a name known to have been used by historical persons would be better re-creation, it seems likely that could have been so used. The Old Norse name is perhaps more problematic: the only early examples are fictional, and some, like the smith in 'Vo"lsunga saga' who is Fa/fnir's brother, are clearly non-human. [5] We did find a historical example from the late 14th century, but we did not find much support for early use of names containing an element . [6] On the whole we think it unlikely that the name was used by real people in the 9th century, and we cannot recommend the name as good re-creation for that period. [7] A slightly similar-sounding name that definitely was used at that time is . [8] If you particularly wanted to make it clear that he was a smith, you could still do so by giving him a nickname meaning 'smith' and calling him , like the 10th century man named who was called . [9] Now we have to put the pieces together. Just as in English we normally say 'John's daughter', with the possessive form of the father's name, and not 'John daughter', so Old Norse required the genitive case of the father's name. (This corresponds roughly to the English possessive.) In particular, the daughter of a man called is , or simply . (If anyone had used the name , his daughter would have been .) The whole name is then or . The first of these would have been pronounced roughly \HEE-or-dees SMIDH-RAHGH-nars DOAT-teer\ in your period; for the second, just omit the \SMIDH\. Here \DH\ stands for the sound of in , and \GH\ is the voiced version of the slightly rasping sound in Scottish and German . As I said at the beginning, the Old Norse of your period was written in runes, not in Latin letters. You can find five versions of the futhark, or runic alphabet, at the following site: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/1568/futhark.html Either version of the younger futhark (with sixteen runes each) would be appropriate. You'll notice, however, that there are no runes corresponding to some of the letters in the name, like the and the {dh}. Just as our letter represents different sounds in the words and , the Norse used one rune to represent more than one sound. The name would actually have been written with the runes corresponding to the spelling or . (Here {th} stands for the third rune, the thorn, and is the 5th rune, not the 16th.) Note that this spelling is valid only when you write the name in runes; it should not be used with Latin letters. You may want to write the name as if you have to explain it to someone who doesn't read runes, since this is the standard scholarly form. When special characters are inconvenient you might write , which is a quite standard Anglicization of the name. Your proposed arms can be blazoned 'Per fess enhanced azure and vert, a bar enhanced sable surmounted by a mullet of nine points or'. ('Enhanced' means that the bar and the break between the blue and green is above the midline of the shield.) In one important respect they resemble early armory: they are admirably simple. Unfortunately, they differ from historical arms in several important ways. The biggest problem is the black bar on the blue and green field. The heraldic tinctures are divided into two classes, the metals (yellow and white), and the colors (red, black, blue, green, and purple). >From the earliest days of heraldry in the 12th century the overwhelming majority of armory has followed a fundamental design principle often called the Tincture Rule: metal-tinctured charges are not placed on metal-tinctured fields, and color-tinctured charges are not placed on color-tinctured fields. In particular, placing a black charge on a blue and green field violates this principle. It's likely that over 98% of all period armory follows this rule, and (apart from a couple of unusual situations that don't apply here) the SCA College of Arms won't register arms that violate it. [10] It's a bit unusual in period armory to find a field divided between two colors or two metals, though not so unusual as violations of the Tincture Rule. It's even more unusual to find the line of division enhanced or covered by a bar, let alone both at once. When a bar is used in period armory, it's usually one of a set: two bars, three bars, or sometimes two pairs of bars. It's unusual to find a mullet used as an overall charge; more often mullets were used to fill otherwise empty spaces on the shield. Finally, the mullet of nine points does not appear to have been a recognized period charge; a medieval herald would most likely have called it a sun. (Period mullets generally had five, six, or eight points.) As you can see, it would take a major redesign to bring these arms into line with period armorial styles. Even to make them registerable under the Rules for Submissions of the SCA College of Arms (which is not necessarily the same thing as making them authentically period) will require some significant changes. [11] A redesign on this scale is likely to involve some back-and-forth discussion between you and the heralds. The Academy prefers not to spend so much time on armory for a non-armorial persona, and in any case we're not really set up for this kind of consultation. [12] For this kind of work we recommend that you consult with your kingdom's heralds and the subscribers to the heraldic mailing list SCAHRLDS at . The best way to get a feel for period armorial style is to look at examples of period arms. Here is a list of several period rolls of arms we have found on the web: http://www.wctc.net/~randomsf/rollofarms.htm There's a very good book that you can use, too: Joseph Foster's _The Dictionary of Heraldry_ (New York: Arch Cape Press, 1989). It contains several hundred color drawings of arms found in period English rolls of arms. Lindorm Eriksson, Arval Benicoeur, Hartmann Rogge, Zenobia Naphtali, Juliana de Luna, Walraven van Nijmegen, and Blaise de Cormeilles also contributed to this letter. We hope that it has been of some help; please write again if anything in it is unclear. For the Academy, Talan Gwynek 19 June 1999 ===== References and Notes: [1] Lind, E.H. Norsk-Isla"ndska Dopnamn ock Fingerade Namn fra*n Medeltiden (Uppsala & Leipzig: 1905-1915, suppl. Oslo, Uppsala and Copenhagen: 1931); s.n. . [The is an a-umlaut; the is an with a small circle directly above it.] [2] Kruken, Kristoffer, ed. Norsk Personnamnleksikon. 2nd ed. (Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget, 1995); s.n. . [3] We use {dh} to stand for the letter edh. This letter is properly written like a backward <6> with a short bar across the curved upright. Here it is pronounced like the in . [4] Lind, op. cit. s.nn. <-di/s>, , , , . [5] THE STORY OF THE VOLSUNGS (VOLSUNGA SAGA) with Excerpts from the Poetic Edda, Online Medieval and Classical Library Release #29. HTML Markup by Janet Talley, Last Update 7/25/97. See in particular Ch. 14. [6] Lind, op. cit. s.n. . [7] You mentioned in your letter that your father Regin was supposed to have been named after the fictional smith. Unfortunately, Old Norse names do not seem to have been given in this way: for the most part we find a fairly clear-cut distinction between mythological names and names used by historical people. [8] Lind, op. cit. s.n. . [9] Lind, E.H. Norsk-Isla"ndska Personbinamn fra*n Medeltiden (Uppsala: 1920-1921); s.n. . [10] Pastoureau, Michel. Traite/ d'He/raldique, 2nd ed. (Paris: grands manuels Picard, 1993); p.109. [11] As I mentioned, the fact that the black bar on the blue and green field violates the Tincture Rule is enough to keep them from being registered as they stand. The enhanced line of division and the use of a single bar (instead of a full-fledged fess, which is a stripe two or three times as wide as the bar) are also potential problems for registration. [12] As you may recall from earlier correspondence, your persona predates the origin of heraldry by about 250 years, and heraldry didn't reach Scandinavia until a bit later even than that.