Metafiction, Myth and Language: A World in Words (and Pictures)

 Family business having delayed development work somewhat, today I got busy again with one of the 'museum exhibit' explanatory printouts - namely, a full list of the Gyldish rune set: This looks like the final version of the runic character set. Having spent several hours yesterday getting the engraved stones up onto the 6th floor of the art school for final display, arranging some pieces of paper for the exhibition ought to be comparatively simple.

  Having not been home the last couple of days, I needed to get back into some of the 'heavy' work and managed to bash out this rather 'primitive' and 'amateur' rendering of the main character of the epic poem - evidently carved by a friend or colleague of hers, whether a fellow member of Greyfair clan or even one of the other characters mentioned in the text. I used a much wider chisel (in truth a ground-down screwdriver) and hammer, eschewing fine lines and going straight for the memorialization aspect, whilst encapsulating the essence of the character. Rustic, basic but inherently honest in its intentions - perhaps the essence of 'folk art'. I like how the thick, simple lines are also suggestive of the English chalk hill figures: The Cerne Abbas Giant and the Wilmington Long Man - hill figures which have fascinated me for over 30 years This was my first attempt at writing actual Gyldish runes, namely her name and title: "Womba Wislig" (Womba

 Getting back into serious work has been hard the past few days, but last night and this afternoon saw progress on the Gyldland Runic alphabet. First, the usable alphabet had to be defined - no Q, V, X, J or Z; no P (many words starting with 'P' in OE are Latin loan-words, and I wanted each Rune's name to have the initial letter which it represented), with additional characters for the 'specials', namely 'ash', and 'eth/thorn'. I set the six prime deities as the first six characters in the 'alphabet', with the others more or less randomly ordered as follows: So some slight modifications there from the first rough draft, with a couple of alternatives as well for good measure. This Rune system is clearly showing its pictographic origins, with one of my favourites being the 'B' - boda , = 'messenger', i.e raven. The Germanic reference there for readers ought to be clear enough (cf. Hugin and Munin). Also began a basic numbering s

 Yesterday's first tentative step into defining the Gyldland Runic alphabet - now literally carved in stone - got me motivated to scribble down the foundations for a full set. (Of course the set need not be complete and accurate, given that researchers and archaeologists - of fictional civilizations as well as real ones - can only analyze what they have found to date, and so different inscriptions from different times will no doubt have variations on the 'basic' set). Because so much quasi-mystical nonsense has been written about Runes in recent times, I actually have very few texts pertaining to them specifically, but drew inspiration from the Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem (in 'Anglo-Saxon Mythology, Migration and Magic' by Tony Linsell), Rudolf Koch's 'The Book of Signs' and Maria Carmela Betro's 'Hieroglyphics: the Writings of Ancient Egypt' in creating a rough selection of individual symbols - some of which clearly still resemble their earlier, p

With a new 6" x 1/2" stone chisel on its way to me, today I earmarked a few good, flat stones for practice. The plan is simply to trace and then inscribe a few basic example designs representative of the 'later period' of civilisation in my world:   namely, a couple of the simpler, less cursive designs, such as the raven forms of Hrefni: I should also start to think about the form of writing which might be in use as well - despite some vague ideas of how the Gyldland runes might differ from real-world Norse and Saxon types, I've yet to come up witjh something resembling a developed alphabet or set of characters. I wonder if they should differ much at all? After all, the various futharks exist in several forms, and I do use a plethora of words derived not only from OE sources but Norse as well. However, the opportunity is there to come up with something distinctive and suggestive of the people and their character, rather than just straight copying what is in effe