Greetings from the Academy of S. Gabriel!
You wanted to know if <Astriddr inn spaka> is an appropriate name for
a woman born in Iceland, who then went on to Greenland and then
Vinland, around 1015AD. Here is what we have found.
The standard scholarly Old Norse form of the given name is
<A/stri/{dh}r>, where the / represents an acute accent over the
previous letter, and {dh} is the letter edh, which looks like a
backwards '6' with a cross-bar. [1] <A/stri/{dh}r> was in early use
in Old West Scandinavian, spoken in Norway, Iceland, and Scandinavia's
Atlantic colonies, being common in Norway through the whole of the
Middle Ages, with a couple of instances as early as the 9th c. It was
also fairly common in Iceland in the 10th and 11th c., though later it
became much less common. [2] <A/stri/{dh}r> was pronounced roughly
\AW-streedh(r)\, where \dh\ is the sound of <th> in <this> and the
\(r)\ represents a softly voiced trill.
As a byname the adjective <spakr> seems usually to mean 'wise, often
with the notion of prophetic visions', though the word also means
'quiet, gentle'. We found an example of the feminine byname <en
spaka> 'the wise', borne by an Icelandic woman who died in 1031. [3]
The definite article takes different forms for masculine and feminine
names, and <inn> is a masculine form. The corresponding feminine form
is <in>, sometimes found in the variant form <en>, especially in early
manuscripts, but its oldest form is <hin>. Just as <A/stri/{dh}r> is
a standardized scholarly form of the given name, <hin spaka> is one
standardized scholarly form of the feminine byname. (There are others,
but this one seems most appropriate, since it corresponds perfectly to
the likeliest runic spelling, which we give below.) The byname was
pronounced roughly \hin SPAH-kah\.
During this period, a Norse woman would have written her name in
runes. The earliest runic inscription from Greenland is from Narssaq
in the beginning of the 11th century, which can be seen here:
http://arild-hauge.com/gronrune.htmThe runes are a mixture of the futharks labelled 'SHORTTWIGS-RUNES
FROM CA. 900 AD' and 'NORWEGIAN RUNES CA. 1000 - 1050 AD' at
http://arild-hauge.com/enruner.htmIf you can read the futhark off that middle stick, you'll have a set
of runes that are about as authentic as possible for the persona in
question.
We believe that the most appropriate runic spelling of <A/stri/{dh}r>,
using these runes, is <ostri{th}r>, where <o> is the fourth rune in
the listing of Line B. In this same set of runes, we believe <hin
spaka> would have been spelled <hin spaka>. [4]
In sum, <A/stri/{dh}r hin spaka> is a fine choice. In the runes
we've recommend above, this name could have been spelled
<ostri{th}r hin spaka>.
We hope that this letter has been useful to you and that you won't
hesitate to write us again if any part was unclear or if you have
further questions. Research and commentary on this letter was
provided by Maridonna Benvenuti, Aelfwynn Leoflaede dohtor, Juliana de
Luna, Talan Gwynek, and Ines Alfon.
For the Academy,
-Aryanhwy merch Catmael, 04 September 2006
--
References:
[1] Fleck, G. (aka Geirr Bassi Haraldsson), _The Old Norse Name_,
Studia Marklandica (series) (Olney, Maryland: Yggsalr Press, 1977).
[2] Lind, E.H., _Norsk-Isla"ndska Dopnamn ock Fingerade Namn fra*n
Medeltiden_ (Uppsala & Leipzig: 1905-1915, sup. Oslo, Uppsala and
Kobenhavn: 1931), s.n. A/stri/{dh}r
[3] Lind, E.H., _Norsk-Isla"ndska Personbinamn fra*n Medeltiden_.
(Uppsala: 1920-21), s.v. Spaka.
[4] Hauge, Arild, "Norske Runeinnskrifter med de Yngre Runer" (WWW:
Self-published, 2006)
http://arild-hauge.com/innskrifter1.htm
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