there pretty wild and complicated spelling rules of viking period runes in sweden
thought i would show a lesson in rune text writing with the source the swedish heritage found (riksantikvarieämbetet) written by Magnus Källström. direct link to original text.
i am in this text summing up what he wrote in english.
this rune stone with name: “Sö 194″ in Ytterselö parish, Södermanland, Sweden look like this.
read the text from the head and you get:
transliterate them to the latin alphabet and you get:
still not how they actually spoke old norse!
wherehas one THEN do a transcribtion of the previous text which become:
“Ingemund och Tjälve de reste denna sten efter Torkättil, sin fader.“
“Ingemund and Tjälve has risen this stone after Torkättil, their father”.
the writer of the article also mention that with personal names, they in sweden has as praxis to, when writting the name in modern swedish, has as a praxis to change the names to modern swedish names form.
that is, to write them as if the names survived to modern swedish, even if they did not. therefore this happens with the 3 names mentioned in this text.
translation names: ekimunr, þalfi, þurktil
transcribed names: Ingimundr, þalfi, þōrkætl
modern swedish: ingemund, Tjälve, Torkättil
the writer of the article, Martin Källström, explains the reasoning behind this changing the spellings of the names, is to foremost go to preserved names forms that are still in use. ingemund is a name still in use during modern times and torkättil, while a archaic form of the modern name torkel, have still been in use when the latin alphabet did its breakthrough in sweden. therefore we already have a standard for how to spell those names.
tjälve on the other hand, we do not have version preserved with latin letters, wherehas the rune text interprenter most decide how to write those names themselves.
just to give some more background to how i believe he thinks when translating names to modern swedish.
this are just from my guesses as a native swedish speaker, magnus källström do not go deeper into exactly why the names are spellt so differently in modern swedish.
but just some general notes on modern swedish vs old norse, to understand why some of these differences are logical.
modern swedish, in oppisition to old norse, is that modern swedish has (almost) no dipthongs (in most dialects). æ, which originally was a dipthongs consisting of a and e, with time became the non-diphtong ä (well for people who do not speak my stockholm accent lmao. we stronly do not believe ä exist, and hardly prounance it like that).
we also do not anymore þ sounds, which has been changed to T in most words. therefore magnus källströms translated. with æ= ä and þ=t þōrkætl= Torkättil
also the two tt in torkättil har there because of modern swedish spelling rules. 2 tt= a short vowel before it.
Att läsa runor och runinskrifter. by magnus källström. published at riksantikvarieämbetet (the swedish heritage found). riksantikvarieämbetet is the the deperment that have the main responbility of taking care of the pre-historical rune texts in sweden. link: https://www.raa.se/kulturarv/runor-och-runstenar/att-lasa-runor-och-runinskrifter/