Runestones - Translation, interpretation and discussion

I checked all the runes and wrote them down. My listing differs a bit from @C_N66. I see a extra ᚨ (a), and I see ᚹ (w) not ᚡ (v).

ᛞᛖᚾᛞᚨᚷᛋᚲᚨᛚᛚᚲᛟᛗᛗᚨᛞᚨᛋᛗᛗᚨᛋᛗᚨᚨᛋᛗᛖᛞᛖᚾᛋᛁᛚᛋᚲᚨᚷᛖᚱᛚᛁᚨᛏᛗᛖᛏᚨᛚᛚᛖᚾ
dendagscallcommadasmmasmaasmedensilscagerliwaatmetallen
The rune ᚲ = c or k
The rune ᚹ = w

It need knowledge of Swedish to place the spaces
But it does not change much.
If we need to guess I kind of like: The day will come on which Midgard blacksmith’s anger gives life to the metal. Where Midgard represents the Human world of the nine worlds in Norse Mythology.

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Would be

den dag scall comma da smmasmaa smedens ilsca ger liw aat metallen

Modern swedish:

den dag skall komma då smmasmaa smedens ilska ger liv åt metallen.

Funny that the letter Å is spelled both with A and AA…

if you only take smaa = små = small
Leaves smma. somma? = Some?

Den dag skall komma da somma små smedens ilska ger liv at metallen.
The day will come when some small blacksmith’s anger gives life to the metal

Sorry but no… the closest translation to ”some” would be ”somliga”.
Also, you couldn’t say ”små smeden” in swedish…

This is quite a riddle.

There IS One thing in the nordic mythology regarding ”small smiths” though.
The legend says that the hammer of Thor was made by two dwarven blacksmiths, Sindre and Brokk…

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Are there even words in Swedish or old Norse that start with smm?

No, and three consonants in a row In the beginning doesn’t make sense at all. In any language I guess.

In English think of SCHool or STReet. THRee consonants in a row with two the same is less common. But if you allow names then there are. Like MCCoy
Languages like Dutch or German string words together so does Swedish I think.

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Well… the dutch language is something of its own I guess… :sweat_smile: (Even though the grammar is quite close to swedish)

There are of course triple consonants in swedish as well, but not like that.

The original ancient Phoenician written language which many of the world’s languages are based on had NO vowels, only consonants.

Vowels were only added to it a good while later by the Greeks.

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My brain is jarring with the “smmasmaa” word and only thing that it reminds me, is Sammasmaa, a Finnish surname. :grin:

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Does it have some meaning?

It sure does have a meaning in my native language (Estonian). :grin: Translating the meaning from Estonian to English gives: “pillar land”.

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Well, modern Finnish word “sammas” means the oral thrush (yeast infection on tongue, common on infants) and “maa” means land/ground/earth.
But if you would start to play with the “sammas” word in old language, it could be twisted to saami and saamenmaa (Sámi land), but this is really grasping in the dark. :smiley:
How I always start to feel with these kind of theories with games:

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Well, a couple of days ago I messaged Marco Bianchi, on Uppsala Runic Forum. He is professor at Department of Scandinavian Languages Uppsala university Sweden, to ask if he had any idea for the “Smmasmaa” sequence in our puzzling runestone. This is what I got back.

"Dear Gysbert,
This is indeed an intriguing and very interesting inscription. I discussed it with my colleague Maja Bäckvall who has done work as a language and rune consultant in the gaming industry, but was not aware of the rune stone in this particular game. Unfortunately we were not able to find a solution to the sequence smmasmaa. I will try to summarise our discussion here.

(1) There are a few errors in your transcription. Swedish “å” is written with two ᚨ-runes in “daa” (‘då’) and “aat” (‘åt’). In both cases, the second ᚨ is much less distinctly painted. I think this observation is important in the interpretation of “smasmaa”. There, also, the second ᚨ is a bit less distinctive which results in a transcription smmasmå. ᛚᛁᚹ is spelled with the rune ᚹ (not ᚡ as in your transcription).

(2) The above suggested reading smmasmå allows for interpretations including, e.g., the Swedish words “må” (‘may’) or “små” (plural of “liten” ‘small’).

(3) The interpretation “då sem Asmaa smedens ilska” is problematic for several reasons. First, “sem” is not a Swedish word. It is, however, an Old Icelandic word corresponding to Swedish “som”. For graphical reasons, a carving error ᛋᛗᛗ for ᛋᛟᛗ is much harder to accept than ᛋᛗᛗ for ᛋᛖᛗ. Second, the formulation “då som” is hardly acceptable (and most definitely not idiomatic) in Swedish. But it could of course be a way to mimic Old Icelandic. Third, the whole expression “då som Asmaa smedens ilska ger liv” is quite unorthodox, to say the least.

(4) As I mentioned above the words “må” or “små” could be hidden in the sequence ᛋᛗᚨᚨ but none of them really matches the rest of the sentence. “må” is impossible because there is already a finite verb (“ger”) later in the sentence; “små” is impossible because it is a plural form but the following noun (“smeden”) is inflected in singular.

(5) The not so very exciting consensus Maja and I reached is to just skip the sequence smmasmå and see it as some sort of decoration. Without it, the sentence is written in perfectly idiomatic Swedish: “den dag skall komma då smedens ilska ger liv åt metallen” (‘The day will come when the blackmith’s anger gives life to the metal’). We admit that this is not very satisfying; such decorative runes would have been easier to explain at the end of the inscription. Maybe, it is just a copy error by the graphics person: they intended to write ᛋᛗᛖ but happened to mix up the ᛗ- and ᛖ-runes and wrote ᛋᛗᛗ instead.

(6) I found the forum entry about the rune stone after my discussion with Maja and read it with great interest. I am aware that some of our thoughts have already been expressed by the players of the game. I would just like to make clear that we were not influenced by the forum thread when we discussed the inscriptions :slightly_smiling_face:.

One last question: is the blacksmith Asmaa (Asmå) a character in the game? Or put another way: is there any reason not to drop Asmaa from the interpretation?

Best wishes, Marco Bianchi, Uppsala Runic Forum"

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That was the thought what i had in my post more above.

@Gysbert Great that you have called Marco Bianchi at the Upsalla Runic Forum his explanations are very impressing. :+1:

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Pillar land makes me think of all the moving generator pillars in the South Coast Region of Östertörn Island. You could say the south coast is pillar land.

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Good work, that’s some hardcore investigation! :+1:

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Nicley done! :hushed::grinning:

I see now that I have made a spelling mistake in the translation with the last letter in the word “liv”. :flushed:
But there is no Swedish word “liw”, so I guess that is also a mistake from the designer who made the inscription :grimacing:

My old partially done translation on Gudlögs stenar with the correct translation of the rune in “gerliw”. Sorry :grimacing:

EDIT: I almost forgot to add that the carvers used • or × as space between the runes.

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That is very interesting, I hope the Dev:s reveal more in the future and that name is a potentialy future lore.:thinking:
And I hope for a follow up quest on the book that Viviane had with her to Gudlögs stenar.

I am from now on going to call all the stones Smed stenarna (The Blacksmith Stones or for short The Smith Stones) :hugs:
What do you all think?

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Well, I think that the blacksmith is just a metaphor for Machine builder, and with it is Svante von Ulmer meant.

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