Sometimes it happens that an old text it can be transcribed but understanding it correctly is already a little more difficult. In fact, it is something that is not limited to past times; anyone who has read or attempted to read Ulysses by James Joyce knows that it is not exactly an easy book. But the interpretive complexity becomes almost inextricable when we go back to an inscription from many centuries ago .
This is what happens, for example, with the famous Rök Stone . It is a stela found in the town of Ödeshög , Swedish province of Östergötland, next to a church. It is a granite slab three and a half meters high (although one is underground) that has both sides covered by rural inscriptions :up to two hundred and eighty characters in the former and four hundred and fifty in the latter. There were also on the sides but they have been lost due to breakage.
The Rök Stone was discovered in the 17th century embedded in the wall of themedieval temple who took the place of the current one; This one was built in 1843 after the demolition of the previous one, but it was decided to leave the stela in its place until twenty years later, at a time when archeology was taking firm steps, it was removed from there and left on display nearby. . In 1991 a small museum was even built .
This piece was carved around the 9th century , as deduced from the runic alphabet that covers it, cataloged as a transition to the style called young futhark and that it is an evolution of the old futhark and it is composed of sixteen runes compared to its predecessor, which had twenty-four; this reduction of characters occurred precisely around the year 800 AD parallel to an increase in phonemes that transformed proto-Norse into Old Norse . These changes are not only seen in the Rök Stone but also in others like the Danish one from Snoldelev, which is contemporary, and even some older ones like the Swedish ones from Björketorp or Stentoften, which are two centuries earlier.
The real problem with the stele was its translation . The first was in 1878, the work of the Norwegian Sophus Bugge, but today there is no consensus on what it says, despite the fact that its reading is considered relatively easy. That is, the issue is what he says, not how he says it. As usual, he first explains that it is a stone memorial made by a certain Varinn in honor of his deceased son Vemod and then recounts life and deeds. However, it has recently been reinterpreted with some differences.
Per Holmberg , an associate professor of Scandinavian languages at the University of Gothenburg, believes that the front face deals with different issues than the back face. Using social semiotics (various meaning of the language depending on the context) he concludes that the idea accepted until now that his runes mention the Ostrogoth emperor Theodoric the Great is wrong and tellheroic sagas , considering that they are based on an error of interpretation tending to a certain illusory nationalism. It is something that the linguist Bo Ralph It was already questioned ten years ago and now it is gaining strength.
According to Holmberg, the number of riddles and riddles that are in the stone would not correspond to a narration of the alleged mythical deeds of Vemod but probably speaks of the very carving of the runes, that is, of the elaboration of the stela itself. Something much more prosaic than narratives of Viking prowess and battles.