Talk:Merseburg Incantations

Comment 1

Shouldn't Sunna be the same as Sol (goddess)?--Wiglaf 22:52, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

fixed.

Invented or written down, that is the question

What bugs me is whether the spells were invented in 10th century, or had existed before and only written down in 10th century. If the former was the case it was already Christian era, and its "purer pagan religiosity" will be difficult to be claimed, no? I think this issue should be stated clearer in the article. Anyone willing to assist? --BorgQueen 20:58, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

I think it is genuine, because there is a very similar poem from the Faroes, but in that poem the gods have been replaced by Christian characters.--Wiglaf 21:23, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

So what you are saying is that the Merseburg spells had existed before Christian era and only written down in 10th century? I am confused because the introductory paragraph of the article says it has been "composed" in 9th-10th century. (This part was translated by User:Salleman, not by me) --BorgQueen 21:28, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

How could we possibly know when it was composed?--Wiglaf 21:36, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Ok I am going to do a little copyediting then... --BorgQueen 21:41, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

It is done. I hope I made it clearer in the context concerned. --BorgQueen 21:52, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Good :-).--Wiglaf 08:01, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I read somewhere on the internet that very similar healing spells are found in ancient

India texts, so possibly this type of spell goes back to ancient aryan/indo-european times. Sorry I can't be more specific. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 213.122.23.174 (talk) 17:16, 20 March 2007 (UTC).

I found a site containing an Indian spell text. It's from the Atharva Veda Saunaka 4.12

I have put an external link to it (http://uweb.cas.usf.edu/~clopez/CAL/AV/DIS/ch1a.htm)

English

This is an extremely good article, but the English was a little out of focus at some points. I have left the content entirely alone, as I have nothing to add to it, but have re-worked the English to try to do justice to it (I have at some points gone back to the original German and re-translated).Staffelde 14:52, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

The Bracteate

the caption reads "Scandinavian Bracteate from the time of the migrations. Odin riding his horse." Is it? The image has no source at all. The inscription appears to be (mirrored) Elder Futhark, which may support the "time of the migrations" claim, but not the necessarily the "Scandinavian" one. Is it Odin? Can anybody decipher the inscription for us, or how can we check if this is true? I can only make out gibu alna at the end, which sounds more German than Norse to me. dab (ᛏ) 17:03, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

This is the piece known as Seeland-II-C, or the Sjaelland bracteate 2: the inscription is discussed here:

http://www.nordic-life.org/nmh/InEnglish/2eng.pdf
There is an image here: http://www.yale.edu/german/whobrey/runepics.html
Staffelde 11:01, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Healing or riding?

Still with the bracteate, the English caption says that this is Odin riding a horse, whereas the German caption says that it shows Odin healing a horse, as is also mentioned in the intro text to the second spell. Which? Staffelde 21:21, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I just corrected the caption. Thanks for pointing it out. BorgQueen 21:31, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

that's much better, thanks! although, I'm afraid, the bracteate does not seem to be among those pictured on the page you linked. dab (ᛏ) 10:24, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

It is there, I assure you! picture 10 - Sjaelland Brakteate - shows all three, of which the central image is this one: it supports the present position, ie, with the horse and rider facing to the right. User:Staffelde (not signed in)

I made a stub at Seeland-II-C, putting {{fact}} to the claim that it is Odin healing his horse, since it is less than obvious, and I couldn't find an attribution. I will also flip the image: I have never heard of mirrored runes, so I suppose the natural explanation is that it is simply the jpg was mirrored. dab (ᛏ) 10:44, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I realized that the interpretation of "Odin healing his horse" is common to all 400 or so C-bracteates. It would still be nice to have a source discussing this. dab (ᛏ) 11:01, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Quite - it's why I raised the point! User:Staffelde (not signed in)

Seeing that Image:Vadstena_bracteate.jpg also has mirrored runes, I am thinking I may have been too hasty in mirroring the image. Is it possible that these bracteates inscriptions are mirrored because they were made from a mould or something? If so, that should be noted on bracteate! Any help? dab (ᛏ) 15:32, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

See above comments on directin of images of Seeland Brakteate

epic?

I've been adjusting links to the Epic disambiguation page. I know nothing of The Incantations (except what I've read here!), but wonder if someone could help me out with the word "epic" used here. Usually, an epic story would be very long with many characters, etc. so I'm wonder if "epic" is appropriate and whether to have a link to Epic poetry or not. Could someone enlighten me and/or edit the page as appopriate? John 20:08, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

A good point, and thanks for raising it. "Epic" occurs in this article simply as a direct translation of "episch" in the corresponding German article. Doubtless a case could be made for referring to Germanic mythology as "epic" in a technical sense, but it would be simpler and more comprehensible to change "epic" to "mythological", which I will do accordingly, making the necessary changes in the rest of the sentence. Staffelde 02:47, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Looks good! Can "some previous" be replaced by "a"? The sentence still seems strange. John (Jwy) 05:50, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

The fresh eye sees all... You're right - it didn't quite work. I've had another go at it, and I am happier now that it has got the meaning properly AND sounds like English - let me know what you think. If there are any other bits that don't read quite right, please point them out. Staffelde 17:09, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Delisted - Relisted GA

This article did not go through the current GA nomination process. Looking at the article as is, it fails on criteria 2b of the GA quality standards in that it does not cite any sources. Most Good Articles use inline citations. I would recommend that this be fixed, to reexamine the article against the GA quality standards, and to submit the article through the nomination process. --RelHistBuff 09:18, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Citations fixed, relisted GA Atom 00:36, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Proofed

Proofread. Added additional inlince citations, enlarged document image. Will review later for second pass at proofing. Atom 23:17, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

GA

I've passed this article, yet I'd like to encourage further improvements and more citations. The line translations are somewhat difficult to follow in three column format. Perhaps the example at Beowulf could improve the presentation here. I agree this is GA material, but doubt it will advance to FA in the near future due to length. Is there no more that can be said about such a culturally significant find? Durova 20:39, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Merseburg Incantations/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

I am doing the GA Reassessment on this article as part of the GA Sweeps project. H1nkles (talk) 15:09, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

My main concern with the article is a lack of citations in certain areas. The citations in the article are credible and well-formatted. I put a couple of ^{[citation needed]} templates in where I felt that citations needed to be added. There are a couple of ^{[citation needed]} templates on the article since March of 2008, those have not been removed but I have a feeling that they have been addressed. I will put the article on hold for a week pending work on the citations. Other than that the article is fine. Please contact me on my talk page if you have any questions. H1nkles (talk) 15:26, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

The article has been on hold for a week with no work done. At this point I will delist the article as it does not meet the GA Criteria for proper referencing. H1nkles (talk) 15:10, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Hm. Well, let's see about getting those tags fixed. As far as I can tell, there are four:

- Regarding the first tag, I'm not sure why it's there at all. The MS is listed as Codex 136, f. 85r in the Merseburg Cathedral Library Index. This does not seem to be in dispute. Why the tag?

- According to [1], the translation in question was done by D.L. Ashliman, formerly of the University of Pittsburg. I have not been able to track down a published source, if there is one. There is his website, which is mentioned in the text of the article, and which is dated to 1998. This seems good enough to me, but I'm not wise on the ways of citing webpages vs. published works.

- The second translation also comes from Ashliman, but for this one I found the published source:

Ashliman, D.L. 'Folk and Fairy Tales: A Handbook'. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004. pg. 90. ISBN 0-313-32810-2

- As for the last tag: Anyone can look the songs up on youtube. Do we really need documentation for this? Especially something so trivial?

I'm not pushing for this article to get GA status, so I'm not going to make any changes to the article itself. But if this is all that's holding the article up, then the involved parties should spend 2 minutes and get this done. Thanks. Aryaman (talk) 10:42, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Spell text

Why is there a 'citation needed' on each of the original language versions of the spells, when you can clearly read every word of it on the picture of the original handwritten spells that is included in this article? I have references for the exact wording in books I own but those are secondary sources compared to that photograph of the original handwriting! --Feuerrabe (talk) 22:02, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

The text is also taken, word for word, from the printed reference already given at the end of the paragraph (Jeep 2001). This was just an example of improper use of the tag. This happens sometimes, either because people just go about randomly tagging sentences without bothering to consult the references already given, or sometimes deliberately to push some sort of agenda. What was actually lacking a citation was the insertion of "(so did)" suggesting that four goddesses rather than just two were involved. This was inserted with no basis in the reference cited, but it was not tagged because the paragraph had a footnote. This is an example of how "checking references" on Wikipedia too often means "check if there is a little number attached". In reality, it is ambiguous whether two or four goddesses are involved. Opinions to either effect can be cited, of course, but with attribution. --dab (𒁳) 13:11, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

in fact, there seem to be variant readings. The text as given is indeed referenced, it is as given by Jeeps 2001. But looking at the manuscript, I find it hard to make out if it is "thu biguol en friia" or thu biguol en frua". And indeed Simrock read "frua". This is significant, as Frua is cognate with Old Norse Freyja, and Frija is cognate with Old Norse Frigg. Simrock like Jeeps gives "Freya". This seems to be a mistake, as Simrock bases his "Freya" on his reading "frua", while Jeeps persists in translating "Freya" even though he opts for the reading "friia".

The reading "frua" appears to be obsolete in recent publications, but it is certainly well represented in 19th century literature. This needs elaboration. In the meantime, it is perhaps wise to take the translation by Fortson (2004)[2] as it is more literal. --dab (𒁳) 13:35, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for taking out these tags! As far as the frua/friia thing goes the German Wikipedia gives an exact transliteration and uses friia but I can't see which source that has. On another note 'idisi' does quite likely not mean 'goddesses'. The author of the Heliand uses that same word to describe the women who find Jesus' grave empty and those are just ordinary women.--Feuerrabe (talk) 21:46, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

The friia reading is the most widespread today. In fact, I only find the frua reading in 19th century sources. But since most recent sources seem to ignore the fact that there even was a variant reading in the past, I am not sure what its status is.

As for 'idisi', it means "ladies" (disir), and could be applied as a honorific to supernatural as well as to mortal women. --dab (𒁳) 14:25, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

I am not sure where you are taking such a fixed reading for 'idisi' from. There are only two known uses of the word (one of the Hadrian fragments and this spell) and I am more than sceptical of making such a statement as you did. My professor who was the first to analyze the Hadrian fragment found in Leipzig interpreted it as simply 'women'.--Feuerrabe (talk) 14:54, 17 September 2010 (UTC)