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Information about Undley Bracteate

The Undley bracteate, a 5th century bracteate found in Undley Common, near Lakenheath, Suffolk (). It bears the earliest known inscription that can be argued to be in Anglo-Frisian Futhorc (as opposed to Common Germanic Elder Futhark).

The image on the bracteate is an adaptation of an Urbs Roma coin type issued by Constantine the Great, conflating the helmeted head of the emperor and the image of Romulus and Remus suckled by the wolf on one face. With a diameter of 2.3 cm, it weighs 2.24 grams. It may have originated in northern Germany or southern Scandinavia, and brought to England with an early Anglo-Saxon settler.

The inscription reads:
g͡æg͡og͡æ – mægæ medu,
The o being the earliest known instance of an os rune contrasting with æsc .

The mægæ medu is interpreted " for a ", maybe in the sense "reward for a relative" referring to the bracteate itself. The gægogæ appears to be some magical invocation or battle cry, comparable to the g͡ag͡ag͡a on the Kragehul I lance-shaft: in both cases the ga (gæ, go) are written as bindrunes, that is the X shape of the gyfu has side-twigs attached for the vowel. Since the entire difference of æ vs. o consists in slightly bent twigs, in a context of a magical chant or cry rather than actual words, the inscription presents only tenuous evidence of incipient Anglo-Frisian brightening.

References

  • J. Hines and B. Odemstedt, The Undley bracteate and its runic inscription, Studien zur Sachsenforschungen, 6 (1987), pp. 73-94.
  • J. Hines, The Scandinavian character of Anglian England in the pre-Viking period, BAR British Series 124 (Oxford, 1984), pp. 204-9.
  • S. E. West, Gold bracteate from Undley, Suffolk, Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 17 (1983), p. 459.
  • M. Axboe, The Scandinavian gold bracteates, Acta Archaeologica, 52 (1982), p. 75.

External links

The 5th century is the period from 401 to 500 in accordance with the Julian calendar in Anno Domini, the year of our Lord.

Overview

The Western Roman Empire is ruled by a succession of weak emperors, and true power falls increasingly into the hands of powerful generals.
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A bracteate (from the Latin bractea, a thin piece of metal) is a flat, thin, single-sided gold coin produced in Northern Europe predominantly during the Migration Period of the Germanic Iron Age (in Sweden this includes the Vendel era), but the name is also used for later
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Lakenheath is a village in Suffolk, England.

Village of Lakenheath

Lakenheath is a village of around 8200 residents[1] situated in the Forest Heath district of Suffolk, England.
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    Suffolk (pronounced /'sʌfək/) is a historic and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south.
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    Anglo-Saxon (also, Anglo-Frisian) Futhorc is a runic alphabet, extended from the Elder Futhark from 24 to between 26 and 33 characters. It was used probably from the 5th century onward, recording Old English and Old Frisian.
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    Elder Futhark
    Child systems Younger Futhark, Anglo-Saxon Futhorc

    Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

    The Elder Futhark (or Elder Fuþark, Older Futhark, Old Futhark
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    Constantine I
    Emperor of the Roman Empire

    Head of Constantine's colossal statue at the Capitoline Museums
    Reign 306 - 312 (hailed as Augustus in the West, officially made Caesar by Galerius with Severus as Augustus, by agreement with Maximian, refused
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    Romulus
    Reign April 23, 753 BC - 717 BC
    Born 771 BC
    Alba Longa
    Died 717 BC
    Rome
    Predecessor None
    Successor Numa Pompilius
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    Anglo-Saxon is the collective term usually used to describe the ethnically and linguistically related peoples living in the south and east of the island of Great Britain (modern Great Britain/United Kingdom) from around the early 5th century AD to the Norman conquest of 1066.
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    *Ansuz.

    The shape of the rune is likely from Neo-Etruscan a (), like Latin A ultimately from Phoenician Aleph.

    Its name survives only in the Icelandic rune poem as Óss, however, referring to Odin, identified with Jupiter:


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    Æ is a grapheme formed from the letters a and e. Originally a ligature representing a Latin diphthong, it has been promoted to the full status of a letter in the alphabets of many languages.
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    Kragehul I (DR 196 U) is a migration period lance-shaft found in Funen bearing the Elder Futhark inscription
    ekerilazasugisalasmuhahaitegagagaginugahe[?]lija[?]hagal(a)wijubig?


    The first part is read as

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    a and the þ rune in ligature on the Rök Runestone.]] A bind rune is a ligature of two or more runes. Oddly, they are extremely rare in Viking Age inscription, but instead they are common in pre-Viking Age (Proto-Norse) and in post-Viking Age (medieval) inscriptions.
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    Gyfu is the name for the g-rune in the Anglo-Saxon rune poem, meaning "gift" or "generosity":

    Gyfu gumena byþ gleng and herenys,
    wraþu and wyrþscype and wræcna gehwam
    ar and ætwist, ðe byþ oþra leas.
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