Talk:Merseburg charms

This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Ancient Germanic studies Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Ancient Germanic studies, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Ancient Germanic studies articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Ancient Germanic studiesWikipedia:WikiProject Ancient Germanic studiesTemplate:WikiProject Ancient Germanic studiesAncient Germanic studies articles Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. defunct .Religious textsWikipedia:WikiProject Religious textsTemplate:WikiProject Religious textsReligious texts articles

	Mythology C‑class Low‑importance
Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

	Middle Ages Low‑importance
Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Shouldn't Sunna be the same as

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)[reply]

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Faroes, but in that poem the gods have been replaced by Christian characters.--Wiglaf 21:23, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply

]

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)[reply]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)[reply]

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)

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

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)[reply

]

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

dab (ᛏ) 10:44, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply

]

I realized that the interpretation of "Odin healing his horse" is common to all 400 or so

dab (ᛏ) 11:01, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply

]

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

Seeing that

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

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)[reply]

This article did not go through the current

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

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

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)[reply]

This discussion is

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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. --

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. --

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)[reply]

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" (

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)[reply]

Look at the actual Mereseburg manuscript - actual manuscript unretouched and closeup of "frija" section - the alleged mention of "frija" is almost obliterated and looks like rrua. To be generous maybe frua. Maybe it said frija, doesn't look like it though. Whose authority are we taking that this does not read "frua" or "rrua"? Who retouched the copy of the manuscript we have on wikipedia which still shows "rrua"? In fact if you look at either version of the manuscript photo we do not have an accurate transcription of it on wikipedia (there are a number of places that are not accurately transcribed in OHG). Where is Frija coming from? Obotlig (talk) 04:05, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, there has been some discussion about whether it's Frija or Frua in the past, and this article has long needed a rewrite. While I don't have time at the moment to dig into these images and I feel that producing our own transcripts based off of internet images falls well into the category of

WP:OR, I note that I have tagged these [High German texts for references before] while doing sweeps and adding some references and placing some new material here. These tags were, however, removed by Dbachmann thereafter

. Further, note that Dab's edits also seems to have minced some sources.

I would like to remind users that, yes, quoted primary sources require references, even if there is some image on its article or elsewhere that may lead one to some impression or another. As I currently have my library with me, I will now add the texts in questions from a reliable source. :bloodofox: (talk) 06:09, 25 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not all primary sources require a reference to be quoted (particularly, for example, in an article about a book or movie or screenplay - perhaps I misunderstood "require references") but obviously in this case we will need expert citation for any transcriptions or translations.

Due to concerns about accuracy, lack of any mention of the source, and no release of copyright, the retouched version of the manuscript has been replaced on wikimedia with a photograph. This seemed the best course given the number of articles linking to the questionable version. Obotlig (talk) 19:37, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest the following in all humility to trained philologists who I greatly hope might have have more scientific means of testing this hypothesis than I can think of. Couldn't the Merseburg Incantations actually have been a part of a marriage ceremony? With a little imagination, I could go line by line and describe a reason these words might have been affirmations of the new role of the bride. The final lines, variations on joining, make this theory most tempting. Further, in a land that had been converted to Christianity for centuries, would not such an invocation of ancient symbols be most tenaciously preserved in something as universal and necessary as a marriage litany? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.64.161.30 (talk) 18:11, 16 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Balder and Phol are applied to same character so how about Lord Apollo? 19 November 2012 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.22.186.133 (talk) 23:12, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I worked on the /*Parallels*/ section in a series of edits, but I feel it has become somewhat inflated, partly because of the numerous citations that deal with parallels, but may not be all that much of interest to people strictly interested in the OHG interpretations. (Since all of the Scandinavian and Scottish parallels are modern or near-modern). It might make sense to then spin off an article on the "Second Merseburg charm type" of spells.

I suppose it is all right to spin-off such a child article, since it is done all the time. Though I have my reservation on this because this categorization may not have gained general acceptance. There is apparently a "Charm Indexes" project in the works, along the lines of Stith Thompson (Aarne-Thompson) folktale motif indices and the TSB Scandinavian ballad index, this is still in the works and hasn't gained a foothold (general familiarity). The "Second Merseburg charm" type is one of fourteen(?) categories established by Ebermann (Ebermann, Oskar (1903). Blut- und Wundsegen in ihrer Entwicklung dargestellt. Palaestra:Untersuchungen und Texte aus der deutscehen und englischen Philologie. Vol. XXIV. Berlin: Mayer & Müller.) and is discussed in English in the following aritcle: Tatiana Agapkina, Andrei Toporkov (Moscow), "Charm Indexes: Problems and Perspectives" (pdf) --Kiyoweap (talk) 00:44, 5 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]