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A visit to one of my absolute favourite museums as a language and history geek - which happens to be in my home town. Bryggens museum, Bergen, Norway, has probably the largest collection of Runic inscriptions anywhere. Found in excavations after a fire destroyed a large area in the oldest part of the city in the 1950s. Most are on wood, this on the leather of a shoe: "Amor vincit omnia" - Latin language in Runic script! 1/*
#history #language
The inscriptions are 12th to 14th century, a time when it was previously thought the use of Runes had pretty much died out. Turns out it was used loads for trivial everyday messages - or for very serious and urgent ones, like this one: "My love, kiss me!"
But wooden sticks generally rot and disappear. Not so at Bryggen, where conditions were ideal for preservation of organic material. This lovely, quite well crafted one, says: "Like you are, I wish my [female] were".
Final one for today, and another glimpse of a love triangle:
"I love that man's wife so much that fire seems cold: and I am that woman's lover".
