I'm working on a few saxes. On most of my knives I put my signature as my mark, but with these I'd like to mark them in a more appropriate manner for the time period. I'm thinking a runic inscription basically saying "George made me". A couple of problems... George was not a common name at the time, to the best of my knowledge. I'll be happy if I can get the pronunciation right, basically 'Jorj', which doesn't look that out of place... Also, the 'made me' part would need to be translated into ole Frankish, roughly 900AD.

The 'j' sound seems to be one of those runes that underwent alot of change over the years, it's been difficult to determine which rune would best fit the time and area.

I'm guessing stamping or carving the runes into the metal would be more appropriate than etching? If I had the skill, I'd inlay it... Although the blades are hardened, the backs are still fairly soft, so they should be good candidates for carving/stamping.

Any advice is welcome, I'd like to have these finished in the next week or two.

Where are you thinking in Frankland? I think north was going Dutch, south was heading towards French around 900, but I’m no philologist!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Franconian_languages

Do you know of any period runic inscriptions from the area? I suspect the nearby Danes would have the most influence, that would incline me towards the rune set attached, or similar.


I presume you’ve dug thru this site (where I got the rune image)?
http://www.arild-hauge.com/history.htm

I think all the runic inscriptions on weapons were scratched in, not even carved, except for one or two inlaid? Stamping and etching are definitely out. With the short alphabet in use, you have to make one rune stand for two or more letters, I’ll see if I can remember the rules for that. I had a Norwegian helping me figure these issues out back in the last millennium.

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Hi G and all,

Your post inspired me to throw this together. Intended only as a rough guide, I hope it is of some use to you.

All the best,
Michael.

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For old writing systems, I can't recommend this site enough:

http://www.ancientscripts.com/

Michael,
Those are great thanks so much. I know they will come in handy down the road for some of my projects.
Cheers!
:) Sam

If you are going for a very early style, i would use Latin with the runes.
In Latin "made me" would be "me fecit". A quite common inscription on all sorts of metal objects. On swords it was used even longer than on other objects, like on swords of the "Ulfberth-Era", but sadly not in runes.

I'd feared this thread had died... :)

Michael, that helps immensely, I cannot thank you enough.
Gavin, thank you for the website, awesome resource.

Arne, I'd considered that, and may well do it on a future project.

Very glad to have been of help.

Cheers,
Michael.