Paedagogica Historica Vol. 44, Nos. 1–2, February–April 2008, 167–178
Early writing among ancient Vikings and today’s pre-schoolers: a cognitive developmental perspective on reading acquisition and alphabets as effective artefacts1 Åke Olofsson* The present paper reports some observations on pre-school children’s spontaneous as well as adult-supported spelling behaviour and makes comparisons between aspects of these early literacy activities and some features of spellings from mostly twelfth- to fourteenth-century Norwegian runic inscriptions. The runic inscriptions originate from a post-Viking time period where formal schooling was rare and exclusively based on the Latin alphabet. It is argued that runic literacy was serving several important functions in the society and that runic literacy skill was learned in an everyday sociocultural context and that this learning process in a critical way was supported by one major artefact – the runic alphabet itself. It is concluded that there are fundamental similarities between the learning activities among the children of today and the thirteenth-century self-supported print explorer. The basic commonality is alphabetical knowledge and it is concluded that primary knowledge of the actual alphabet is, and has always been, essential for the initial stage of reading acquisition.
000000February Taylor 1/2 Paedagogica 10.1080/00309230701865546 CPDH_A_286723.sgm 0030-9230 Original 2008 44 Dr
[email protected] AkeOlofsson & and Article Francis (print)/1477-674X Francis Historica 2008 (online)
Keywords: reading acquisition; runes; phonological awareness; early literacy; name writing; futhark inscriptions; informal schooling
Literacy development is seen as a result of an intricate interaction between biology-based language skills and the socioculturally transmitted skill of using letters and print to describe spoken language. The interaction between the individual and the cultural environment is considered crucial in all developmental processes,2 reading skills being one of those processes. The use of letters to stand for distinctive sounds of spoken words is certainly one of the most important inventions in human cultural history. In an evolutionary perspective, however, reading is still a new activity for the human mind and needs an interactive sociocultural context for its development. During the last two decades a substantial amount of research has focused on literacy development among pre-school children. It has revealed new knowledge about practices and actions children engage in while they are acquiring literacy.3 Observations of children imitating writing using invented spellings are part of such research. Central to writing activities are of course the letters. Pre-school children already master spoken language; they produce grammatically wellformed utterances and their vocabulary is fairly large. What is new to a pre-school child are the letters and the idea behind their use, the alphabetical principle. *Email:
[email protected] 1 The author would like to thank Åsa Dahlin Hauken at the Museum of Archaeology, Stavanger, Norway, for valuable help regarding the Reve stone and Leila Kantola for helpful comments on the manuscript. 2 David C. Geary, “Principles of evolutionary educational psychology.” Learning and individual differences 12 (2002): 317–45. 3 W.H. Teale and E. Sulzby, Emergent Literacy: Writing and Reading (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1986); C.G. Wells, “Preschool literacy-related activities and success in school,” in Literacy, Language, and Learning: The nature and consequences of reading and writing, ed. D. Olson, M. Torrance and A. Hildyard (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985). ISSN 0030-9230 print/ISSN 1477-674X online © 2008 Stichting Paedagogica Historica
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It is not always obvious how children come to terms with reading. We can observe the process when they read but that does not necessarily reveal how the children decode the spelling of words. By studying the products of their writing attempts on the other hand we can learn more about the interaction between the tools of reading and writing, the letters and children’s knowledge about how they are organised into words. The children’s playful writings show how they grasp the principles of alphabetical knowledge. Can it be that the same developmental processes that preschool children of today go through are also visible in early literacy activities of a twelfth- or thirteenth-century adult pre-reader? The Scandinavian runic inscriptions originate from the Viking age and the early Middle Ages. During the pre-Christian and early Christian period formal schooling was rare and mastered by only a small proportion of the population. The first Christian schools were founded by a bishop around the year 1150 for the purpose of training the clergy and Latin was used as the medium of teaching.4 Therefore it is likely that for the vast majority of runic writers literacy skills were learned in everyday sociocultural contexts and the learning process was mostly supported by the script itself. This kind of learning might bear resemblance to the spontaneous writings of pre-school children of today who base their first attempts on informal everyday contacts with the letters and scripts that surround them. The present paper seeks to ask whether we can gain knowledge regarding literacy development by looking at the products of the beginning readers of ancient runic inscriptions and comparing them with the modern theories of children’s reading acquisition. This kind of comparison has only been made once before, by Hagland and Lorentzen,5 and the aim of the present paper is to further investigate this methodological approach by applying a recent theoretical perspective from developmental psychology. Runic inscriptions There are about 6000 runic inscriptions left today; the majority of them are Scandinavian and about half of them come from Sweden. Runic writing was used for more than 1000 years in Northern Europe so probably the remains of the inscriptions represent only a minor quantity of them. Many of the runic inscriptions were made on solid material like stone, probably intended as monuments because they give the impression of being well planned and skilfully carved. But, we shall see below that there are also print examples of everyday type preserved on simple wooden sticks. Let us first take a look at a text carved on a small piece of soapstone that was used as a fishing sinker (fishing weight) around 1100. It is a 10.7 × 5.3 cm egg-shaped stone that is ornamented on
4 Liv
Kari Bondevik Tønnessen, Norsk utdanningshistorie: en innføring (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1995) Early medieval Scandinavia seemed to have two parallel script systems with different functions and different contexts and existing relatively independently from each other. See also, Terje Spurkland, “Literacy and ‘Runacy’ in Medieval Scandinavia,” in Scandinavia and Europe 800–1350: Contact, Conflict and Coexistence, ed. Jonathan Adams and Catherine Holman (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004). See also the case study of a skilled digraphic (rune-and-roman) writer still in late medieval time, in Jan Ragnar Hagland, “Runic writing and Latin literacy at the end of the Middle Ages: A case study,” in Runes and their Secrets: Studies in Runology, ed. M. Stoklund, M. Lerche Nielsen, B. Holmberg and G. Fellows-Jensen (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006). 5 J.R. Hagland and R.T. Lorentzen, “Skrift med runer i lys av forsking på tidleg skriving hos barn” (Runic writing in the light of research on children’s early writing; in Norwegian), in Runor och ABC, ed. S. Nyström (Stockholm: Sällskapet Runica et Mediævalia. Opuscula 4, Riksantikvarieämbetet, 1997).
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one side and on the other side there are two short runic lines.6 The main runic line is well done and contains the text (with corresponding Latin letters below):
arnktil: kita: rit: runar Arnktil: kita: rit: runar
When translated from Old Norse we get something like: Arne-Ketil Gedda (or Katta) wrote (or carved) runes. Arne-Ketil is a first name of a person and Gedda is a family name. Above the main line there is a second line that is smaller and somewhat less clear:
au ktktil kkkar iit runa au ktktil kkkar iit runa
Although this line is very similar to the first one, both the spelling and the letter forms are less well done. It looks like a draft or an attempt to copy the main line. Such double inscriptions, a well-formed inscription together with a less skilful version of it in runic materials, have often been disregarded by researchers. They have been seen as “a thoughtless and sloppy repetition” or “a sloppier and less exact repetition” in descriptions of the runic scripts.7 Recently, several researchers have started to consider these less skilful imitations as the writing attempts of a less skilled writer.8 The sloppiness and many of the misspellings make sense if they are seen as products of a developing writer in a process of active learning. Runic inscriptions on wood The excavations after a fire in Bergen in Norway 1955 and recent excavations in Trondheim, Oslo and Tønnsberg have found about 900 runic inscriptions. Most of these inscriptions are made on wooden sticks (pinewood) and they are well preserved because they were buried in mud and clay which protected them against decay. Moreover, it has been possible to date the Bergen materials more exactly with the help of layers which come from the six big fires in Bergen whose dates are known. The conclusion that can be drawn from the materials is that runic writing was widely used from the end of the twelfth century to the fifteenth century. All types of literacy are represented in these inscriptions: … they vary from religious and secular texts in Latin to Old Norse poetry, commercial correspondence, writing exercises and indecipherable hocus-pocus, to everyday messages and intimate communications including pornography and obscenities.9
What is striking, at least from the educational and psychological point of view, is the relatively large number of wooden sticks that contain in addition to the text both names of persons and the runic alphabet itself (called the fuþark).
6 The fishing sinker (fishing-weight) from Reve, now at Stavanger Archaeological Museum, Norway. Magnus Olsen and A. Liestøl, eds., Norges innskrifter med de yngre runer (Norwegian younger runic inscriptions; in Norwegian), vol 3 (Oslo: Norsk historisk kjeldeskriftinstitutt, 1954), 162–7. 7 Terje Spurkland, Norwegian Runes and Runic Inscriptions (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2005). 8 J.R. Hagland, “Runer frå utgravingane i Trondheim bygrunn 1971–94: Med eit tillegg av nyfunne innskrifter elles frå byen” (N774–N894) (Runes from the excavations in Trondheim; in Norwegian). Department of Scandinavian Studies and Comparative Literature. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. The work is the preliminary manuscript for publication in the corpus edition Norges innskrifter med de yngre runer, vol. 7, ed. James E. Knirk. http://www.hf.ntnu.no/nor/ Publik/RUNER/RUNER.doc (accessed February 28, 2007). 9 Spurkland, Norwegian runes, 174.
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Person names The large number of sticks with a name on them can be explained as name-tags; they were perhaps used as the owner’s mark and when keeping a record of business transactions. Many of the sticks look as if they had been designed to be attached directly to the goods.10 But there are also many name-tags that are less well formed. There is a certain similarity to pre-school children’s scribbling of their names. In recent research it has been suggested that a person’s name has a special significance in emergent literacy, especially for spelling acquisition and in the process of development of phonemic awareness in alphabetical writing systems.11 That is, explicit knowledge concerning the phonemic units in spoken language and understanding that speech can be conceptualised as a series of discrete sound units. It has also been suggested that names are the very first abstract concepts children learn and that this learning opportunity is created when children discover that different individuals can have the same name. A name may thus function as a powerful device in the child’s cognitive development and seeing it in print and practising writing it has a function in personality development and is of importance for the formation of the self-concept. Thus, the practice of name writing in highly pragmatic contexts may simultaneously create a nourishing environment for the initial stages of literacy development. The fuþark – the Runic alphabet The large number of fuþarks in runic inscriptions – more than 200 have been found – is typical of Norwegian medieval runes.12 Clearly, the fuþark was important in runic literacy. Older variants of the fuþark were already used in Scandinavia during the first century and by the time of Christianity and the introduction of the Latin alphabet (around 1000 AD) a newer version of fuþark had developed.13 The younger fuþark typically consists of 16 runes, a reduction from to the older tradition which used 24 runes. The runes were ordered in three rows and six columns (see Table 1) and often represented in the format of a 3 × 6 matrix. The younger fupark had the same format over a long period of time. During this time the spoken language changed and more detailed descriptions of vowels and a distinction between voiced and unvoiced stop consonants were now needed. New runes Ä , e and A were introduced to describe the sounds œ, e and æ, and c was used to represent the Latin letters c and z. Voicing of stops was marked by a dot but the similar dot marking was also used for devoicing b, which complicated things for a learner. When the Latin alphabet was introduced in Norway as the official writing system at the beginning of the last millennium the runic writing system continued to exist in parallel to it. When considering the need for additional letters (extension runes) and the pressure from the Latin alphabet the stability of the younger fuþark is remarkable. Of all the fuþark finds only 6.4% (eight) are
10 I. Sanness Johnsen, “Bryggen i Bergen: Forrettningsbrev og eiermerker” (The wharf district in Bergen: business letters and owner’s mark; in Norwegian), in Norges innskrifter med de yngre runer, ed. J.E. Knirk (Oslo: Kjeldeskriftfondet, 1989). 11 J.W. Bloodgood, “What’s in a name? Children’s name writing and literacy acquisition,” Reading Research Quarterly 34 (1999): 342–67; I. Levin, A. Both-de Vries, D. Aram and A. Bus, “Writing starts with own name writing: from scribbling to conventional spelling in Israeli and Dutch children,” Applied Psycholinguistics 26 (2005): 463–77; M. Sénéchal, J.-A. LeFevre, E.M. Thomas and K.E. Daley, “Differential effects of home literacy experiences on the development of oral and written languages,” Reading Research Quarterly 33 (1998): 96–116. 12 Kari Fjellhammer Seim, “De vestnordiske futhark–innskriftene fra vikingtid og middelalder – form og funksjon” (The west-nordic futhark – inscriptions from the Viking age and Middle Ages – form and function) (PhD diss., University of Trondheim, Norway, 1998). 13 Spurkland, Norwegian runes, ch. 5.
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The younger fuþark with a corresponding English approximation.
inscriptions with more than the original 16 characters, i.e. an expanded fuþark.14 Knowledge of the Latin script is clearly visible in the fuþark from Trondheim presented by Hagland:15
a b c d e F G h i K l M n o å K r s t u abcdefghiklmnopkrstu
The Norwegian fuþark inscriptions are either plain fuþarks or fuþarks with some additional writing. Of the plain fuþarks only a small proportion contain characters from other alphabets or additional runic characters (extension runes). The structural stability of the fuþark can be an indication of the runic writers’ explicit awareness of the importance of fuþark as a primary tool in literacy learning. When the fuþark is combined with additional text it very often contains the runic writer’s name but the text can also have an economic, religious or even erotic content. However, some inscriptions can also contain syllables and writing that does not seem to make any sense. But if these scribbles are seen as writing exercises documenting a pre-reader’s linguistic skills they do make sense.
Learning the “alphabet” In the material from Bergen there is a fuþark and what seems like four copies of it on the same wooden stick.16 First there is a correct younger fuþark with 16 runes:
FuqoRkhniastbmly The rest of the line looks like a copy of the first half of the line above. But rune number nine is missing, resulting in a line that could be a student’s attempt:
FuqoRkhna The writer seems to have noticed that something went wrong, the i (i) is missing between n and a ( n a) , and makes a correction by inserting a tiny i in between: 14 Ibid., 177. 15 Hagland, Runes from the Excavations in Trondheim, N818. 16 Fjellhammer Seim, The west-nordic futhark inscriptions, 368,
B592; National Library of Norway. Database of the Bergen inscriptions. http://www.nb.no/baser/runer/fullpost.php?bnr=B592 or via http:// www.nb.no/baser/runer/ribwww/english/runeindex.html (accessed August 15, 2006).
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FuqoRkhnia When continuing on another side of the same wooden stick something seems to have already gone wrong from the beginning and the first three runes had to be erased. This is done by simply carving off the surface layer containing the wrongly carved runes. The next attempt then starts with double f-runes:
fFuqoRkhnisarmly FuqoRkhnisabmly It might be that reversing as (as) to sa (sa) disturbs the writer; thereafter the t (t) is missing (maybe because it looks a lot like a (a) and the b ( b) is not completed but ends up as an r (r ). The new attempt also leads to the same as/sa reversal and to a missing t but this time the b comes out correctly. Some progress indeed, but still room for improvement. This copying example which is about 800 years old could be compared with a more recent writing produced by two Swedish children (see Figure 1). A seven-year-old child has written down the complete Swedish alphabet (the third and fourth lines). A five-year-old sibling in turn has tried to copy the alphabet on the line above (the first line) but runs into problems. An attempt to repair the mistakes is made by indicating with arrows that the o and the p should be moved to the left. A new j is added below the incorrect one and even a new k is added (second line in Figure 1). The next activity in this copying exercise is an attempt by the younger child to write down the alphabet on a new piece of paper (see Figure 1, lower part). This time the o is correctly placed but p is missing and the order fails between r and s and the child apparently gives up. The j remains incorrect. Figure 1. A five-year-old Swedish child makes two attempts to copy the alphabet written by a seven-year-old sibling.
Figure 1. A five-year-old Swedish child makes two attempts to copy the alphabet written by a seven-yearold sibling.
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Exercise or nonsense? An interesting item of writing is the three lines carved onto a 2.8 metre long wooden plank, from a boat.17 The middle line shows a fuþark with at least two [e ø], probably three (one unreadable); additional vowel characters inserted after the i, one additional labial consonant (p) is inserted after the b and finally another vowel (æ) is inserted before the final y. The way of inserting the new characters reveals both awareness of and good knowledge about the actual phonological system and the principles behind the alphabetical systems. Thus, the middle line reads (with Latin approximation below):
Fuqo R khnieÄ sbPmtlæy fuþo r khnieø sbpmtlæy
Written on the line above the fuþark is something looking like a systematic syllable exercise corresponding to: iumnamikþitaþi:fefufafø
and on the line below there are systematic consonant–vowel–consonant variations: fat?atratkatnatPatbatmat
The missing rune at position 4 (indicated by a question mark in the example above) can easily be predicted from the fuþark structure; it must be þ. Another demonstration of the writer’s linguistic knowledge can be found in the following example of an extended fuþark. The inscription (number B100 in the Bergen material) is a fragment starting with the last part of a C, with extension runes inserted and followed by systematic syllable variations:18
ørgêiæcdP=:fu:fo:fi:fy:uf:uq:u örgNiäSdPY:
fu:fo:fi:fy:uf:uþ
Thus there are two important features demonstrated by the last fuþark examples. First, when additional vowels are added they are inserted immediately after or before another vowel indicating that the writer must have been aware of the phonological similarity between the rune in the older fuþark and the new one. Second, some of the systematic variations of syllables demonstrate a good sense of rhyme and alliterations in combination with knowledge of the fuþark structure. However, in many “nonsense” writings the repetitive patterns may also be the result of rather mechanical combinations of known fragments. The following runes from Trondheim are an example of this type of variation that is systematic but seems to lack verbal meaning.19
F i Fa F u F o FY F i fifafufofyfi
17 Fjellhammer 18 Fjellhammer
Seim, The west-nordic futhark inscriptions, 347, Number A24. Seim, The west-nordic futhark inscriptions, 357, Number B100; National Library of Norway. Database of the Bergen inscriptions, Number B100. http://www.nb.no/baser/runer/eindex.html (accessed August 15, 2006). 19 Hagland, Runes from the excavations in Trondheim, N823.
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There are also many runic inscriptions that look fragmentary and without apparent verbal meaning. For example find B230 in the Bergen material just reports:20 olol olol
and find B509 says:21 ririaoio ririaoio
This kind of nonsensical writing can be compared to children’s pseudo-writings, that is, when preschool children explore writing for pleasure at the early stages of their literacy development (also called play-writing). Figure 2 shows the writing of a Swedish girl (aged 4 years, 7 months) two years before Swedish children enter school. She knows how to write a few letters and she can recognise her name. Her writing is a rather random repetition of the set of letters that she knows but she seems to be aware of the fact that print is constructed in lines from left to right. Figure 3 shows a sample from the same girl nine months later (aged 5 years, 4 months). She now knows how to spell some simple words: bil (car), sol (sun) and both her own name (Sara) and her brother’s name (Erik). The word “papa” is recognisable although the spelling is not quite correct yet (pappa, farther). She combines letters randomly into longer strings from left to right but she also uses the few real words she knows in combinations to make longer “words”. Her learning of the line principle is now obvious. Figure 3. 2. Writing Spontaneous produced writing by produced the same girl by aasSwedish in Figure pre-school 2, now atgirl, age aged 5:4. 4:7.
Alphabetical order The Latin alphabet of today organises letters into an ABC order. This system, although arbitrary, is taken for granted; it is the prototypical order of letters in the letter inventory. The order is learned by rote memorisation; the order itself does not contain any system. In the early history of alphabetical writing the letter inventory might have been ordered after some principle that is not known.
Figure 2.
Spontaneous writing produced by a Swedish pre-school girl, aged 4 years, 7 months.
20 A. Haavaldsen and E.S. Ore, “Runes in Bergen,” Preliminary report from the project “Computerising the runic inscriptions at the Historical museum in Bergen.” Centre Report 71. Norwegian Computing Centre for the Humanities. Bergen, January, 1997, Ch. 9. Also available at http://www.nb.no/baser/runer/ribwww/ english/runeindex.html (accessed August 16, 2006). National Library of Norway. Database of the Bergen inscriptions. ttp://www.nb.no/baser/runer/eindex.html (accessed August 15, 2006). 21 National Library of Norway. Database of the Bergen inscriptions. http://www.nb.no/baser/runer/ eindex.html (accessed August 16, 2006).
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Figure 3.
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Writing produced by the same girl as in Figure 2, now at age 5 years, 4 months.
According to Gary Miller22 several ancient scripts also coded phonological knowledge by means of how the inventory of graphemes was spatially organised. The matrix form (see Table 1) was not unique to the old fuþark but can be traced back to the Phoenician Byblos matrix and the even older cuneiform Ugaritic script (about 1400 BC). Miller has several suggestions for the kind of knowledge or representation that was originally encoded. In general, the letters were placed into a system representing features of the phonological or phonetic system, such as the place of articulation and sonority. Miller suggests that “users of the fuþark could not fail to notice that the first six letters followed, or established, a pattern for the rest”.23 This is an interesting idea that has been published several times for a number of writing systems but so far the idea seems to have evoked no response from researchers in Scandinavia. (The well-known American runologist Elmer Antonsen does, however, briefly mention Miller’s idea.24) Although the explicit awareness of the phonemic structure in the fuþark matrix was lost it is possible that the ordering of runes made the learning and retention of them easier. While the names of some runes changed and the pronunciation changed the ordering of characters in the matrix was kept the same, which could have been favourable for both users and learners. There is another aspect of the learning and remembering of the fuþark that has not until recently been mentioned in publications despite its mnemonic value and its obvious impact as a motivational factor (at least for some learners). Spurkland reports that the starting letters in the fuþark also formed a rather obscene word in Old Norse.25 Ciphered runes There must have been a rather widespread explicit awareness of the fuþark structure (cf. Table 1). It seems likely that for a great part of the population the fuþark represented the art of writing. During the Middle Ages the fuþarks were written in linear form but there is convincing evidence of an awareness of the classic matrix format. This is demonstrated by the inscriptions with 22 G.D. Miller, Ancient Scripts and Phonological Knowledge (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1994). 23 Ibid., 71, note 7. 24 Elmer Antonsen, Runes and Germanic Linguistics (New York: Mouton, 2002), 15. 25 Spurkland, Norwegian Runes, 192–95; Fjellhammer, The west-nordic futhark inscriptions, 265–72.
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Figure 4. Twig runes. Each rune is represented by a small picture representing a two digit code for the runes position in the fuþark matrix (see Table 1); the first digit represents the row number (starting with the floor as row 1) and the second denoting the rune’s position in the row (column number). The twig runes in the figure illustrate two different ways of coding the twenty-first-century acronym ISKHE (ISCHE). The codes are 2.3 (coded by two hairs to the left and three to the right), 2.5, 3.6, 2.1, 2.3 (the letters i and e are represented by the same rune).
ciphered runes, called twig runes or tree runes (see Figure 4). In principle each rune was represented by a symbol representing its position in the rune matrix. The three rows were numbered from the bottom (floor) so the f-rune was coded as 3.1 (third row [floor], first rune) and thus number 2.5 was the s-rune (second row, fifth rune). For example, the first fish in Figure 4 has two fins to the left and three fins to the right indicating position 2.3 in the fuþark matrix (the rune i). The small figures could also be trees with the index coded by the number of twigs on the left side and on the right side. Besides the function of coding and communicating the matrix structure of the fuþark the twigrunes probably also had other functions. The parts of the texts coded in twig-runes practically always seem to be semantically coherent. That is, a section with specific content, like a Christian prayer embedded in profane text, can be highlighted or embellished by using a specific type of twig-runes for only that actual part of the text. Different sections with different topic can be coded in a unique type of twig-runes for each section. Such systematic use of pure surface features of the writing system can be directly compared to some of the variable surface features we have at our service today, that is, different font types, font size and fat or cursive text. We can easily find examples of how the learners of today are experimenting with such surface features and it already looks as if the medieval learners performed similar experiments.
Figure Each 2.1, 2.3 rune 4.(the isTwig letters represented runes. i and ebyare a small represented pictureby representing the same rune). a two digit code for the runes position in the fu þark matrix (see Table 1); the first digit represents the row number (starting with the floor as row 1) and the second denoting the rune’s position in the row (column number). The twig runes in the figure illustrate two different ways of coding the twenty-first-century acronym ISKHE (ISCHE). The codes are 2.3 (coded by two hairs to the left and three to the right), 2.5, 3.6,
Runic inscription in everyday use As we have seen there is plenty of historical evidence for rather widespread informal educational activity in Norwegian Middle Ages runic literacy. But there are of course also finds from the hands of skilled writers. A few examples will be given in order to illustrate some of the sociocultural context for the runic literacy of the Middle Ages. The first example is a kind of Middle Ages version of our modern email messages of the type “The following items have been shipped to you by Amazon.com”, and reads:
qorkall myntare senter qer pipar þorkœll myntœre senter þer pipar26 In English this says: Torkell moneymaker sends you pepper.
26 Sanness
Johnsen, Bryggen i Bergen, 118, N651.
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Figure 5. Upper panel: Photo of a runic message on a wooden stick. Lower panel: with the runes highlighted. Transcription: Gya sähir at þu kak häim. In English: Gya (female name) says you should go home. Find number B149 in the Bergen database. Date: after 1248. Source: http://www.nb.no/baser/runer/fullpost.php?bnr=B149 (accessed August 15, 2006).
The message was written on a small wooden stick that either might have been attached to the goods or sent in advance. Sometimes business transactions were more complicated and called for more elaborated messages: To Hafgrimr, his partner, Thorir the Fair sends his greetings and God’s true comradeship and friendship. I’ve come up short, my partner. There is no beer, nor any fish. I want you to know, so don’t demand it of me. Ask the bondi to come south to us to see how we are getting on. Urge him to do it, but don’t ask anything for me; and don’t tell Thorstein the Tall anything. Send me some gloves. If Sigridr needs anything, promise it to her. Do not take me to task for my lack of success.27
These runic inscriptions presumably travelled over longer distances and delivery took time. But messages could be sent back and forth over shorter distances too. Figure 5 is an example of a message that could have been brought to a man who was sitting at the local pub asking him to return home. The language used is mainly a rather direct coding of spoken language and most of the messages of this type are condensed and intended for short-time use. As noted by Spurkland this type of literacy has several functional similarities to today’s text messages and internet chat. When taking a closer look at the material one now and then experiences an intense feeling of a sudden disorientation in time, or as Spurkland formulates it rhetorically: “is history repeating itself?”28 Source: Figure 5.http://www.nb.no/baser/runer/fullpost.php?bnr=B149 Upper panel: Photo of a runic message on a wooden(accessed stick. Lower August panel: 15, with 2006). the runes highlighted. Transcription: Gya sähir at þu kak haim. In English: Gya (female name) says you should go home. Find number B149 in the Bergen database. Date: after 1248.
Concluding remarks This rather short journey through some of the finds from Norwegian Middle Ages runic writings has painted a picture of a well-functioning literacy with an astonishing capacity to reproduce and transfer its writing culture over several generations. The informal schooling seems to have been based on the two foundations: the runes themselves and knowledge of the alphabetical principle. The best explanation of the frequent occurrence of the fuþark inscriptions has to do with its central role in the teaching and learning of runic literacy. We have seen similarities between developmental writing activities in today’s children and the runic writers of the Middle Ages.
27 English translation 28 Ibid., 200.
adopted from Spurkland, Norwegian Runes, 186.
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Å. Olofsson
Although we may suspect that many of the runic print explorers were older than our preschoolers,29 the observations tell us that basically the same fundamental processes of human learning and development are operating. That is, activities involving imitation and cooperation in a social and functional context. Reading and writing acquisition has taken place without formal schooling but through implicit social learning mechanisms and supported by artefacts – the letters and the idea of the alphabetical principle. It should be remembered that there is no sharp distinction between implicit learning and awareness of the learning process. As pointed out by James Knirk there are also runic inscriptions demonstrating the writers’ conscious awareness of the process of learning to read and write.30 There are, however, some important differences between runic literacy and reading today. Reading skill is a necessary key to the society of today and the need for fast and accurate word recognition is much stronger now.31 An important aspect of literacy today is that practically everyone is expected to develop functional literacy. The struggle of the most developed societies of today is not restricted to the general level of literacy but more often to problems related to prediction and prevention of reading difficulties among a minority of the population.32 In the early Middle Ages the proportion of active writers and readers was substantially lower. It is possible that the archaeological finds represent the writings of the individuals who formed the elite, perhaps not in any economic or social sense but with regard to their phonological and verbal talent. In a relatively open and tolerant society individual differences are given room for the development of specific interests and sub-cultures. The verbal talent of some gifted individuals can contribute to verbal activity in their own environment and thereby make literacy part of the local culture.33 An important task for modern society is to acquire knowledge of the complicated interaction between the individual and cultural environments and to use such knowledge to obtain an effective mix of explicit instruction and schooling and more implicit learning in a sociocultural context. Notes on contributor Åke Olofsson received his PhD in Psychology at Umeå University in 1986. His main research interest is on reading acquisition and especially phonological awareness training programmes in kindergarten. In his research he is concerned with dyslexia and reading problems in different age groups and he has participated in several Scandinavian cooperative research projects as well as in European researcher networks. His has been professor in Special Education at the Center for Reading Research in Stavanger in Norway and is currently professor in Special Education at Gävle University College in Sweden and visiting professor of Educational Psychology at Växjö University, Sweden and associate professor at the Department of Psychology, Umeå University, Sweden. Address: Department of Education and Psychology, Gävle University College, SE-801 76 Gävle, Sweden.
29 See
Hagland and Lorentzen, Skrift med runer, regarding the association between children and finds with runic inscriptions. There are some finds of children’s toys with runic inscriptions. 30 James Knirk, “Learning to Write with Runes in Medieval Norway,” in Medeltida skrift och språkkultur, ed. I. Lindell (Stockholm: Runica et Mediævalia. Opuscula 2, 1994). 31 K.E. Stanovich, Progress in Understanding Reading (New York: Guilford Press, 2000). 32 Å. Olofsson and J. Niedersøe, “Early language development and kindergarten phonological awareness as predictors of reading problems: from 3 to 11 years of age,” Journal of Learning Disabilities 32 (1999): 464–72. 33 S. Scarr and K. McCartney, “How people make their own environments: a theory of genotype– environment effects,” Child Development 54 (1983): 425.
