<bron16.htm>> [Bronze Age Text]
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More skits of athletic competition
at the Thorri festival are shown in the great inscription at Fossum,
Bohuslän, Sweden. The apparently
incongruous ships here serve as phonetic punning hieroglyphs (isophones), giving
words whose sound approximates that of the object depicted. The upper inscriptions may be read as M-N SKUTA W-L
= Old Norse menn skjöda villi =
"men shooting
wild deer." The skiff is called skuta in Old Norse, which is close to the sound of the verb
"shoot." The antlers of the deer evidently contain a
cryptic ogam text, as yet unresolved.
In the lower inscription a large ship appears,
and the key isophones here are skuta,
in this case meaning "stern," and fram, meaning, "bow." But skuta
fram approximates the sound of skjöda
fram = "to shoot the
farthest." Therefore, the text reads in Old Norse skjoda fram ad targinn = "shooting the farthest at the target." The target
is a large, round shied held by the partner, whose accouterments form the letters
required, as shown. This sport seems
to have been rendered harmless by removing the head from the arrow or by
enclosing the head in wrapping. (Fell 1982). |
