Scott T Shell

This article represents the first scholarly report on the peculiar runic gravestone of Germanic philologist Arthur Middleton Reeves in Cincinnati, Ohio. Translation and analysis of the runic inscription, as well as the historical and socio-cultural background of the stone, suggest a late 1800s Icelandic origin for the monument. The inscription consists of a well-known verse from Hávamál, stanza 76, which was commonly included in obituaries in Iceland around the time of Arthur Reeves and throughout the 1900s. This makes the Cincinnati rune stone unique among American runic finds, which are sometimes based on, for example, Tolkien's literature, modern protection spells, and personal names.

This article discusses Peircean ideas and integrates them into a system that can be understood as magical communication within the Umwelt of the Runemaster of the elder runic tradition. I begin by discussing the issue with the word "magic," and I shed light on the problematic etymon. I then go through various schools of academic thought on what this word means and how it may or may not contrast with religion. Albeit rather briefly, I present various schools of thought from Tylor, Frazer, Peirce, Mauss, Durkheim, Malinowski, Lévy-Bruhl, Jakobson, and Nöth. After discussing these approaches, I offer my own idea, called the Law of Magical Semiosis, which is a definition for magical communication specific to the Runemaster and his Umwelt. The goal of this article is to create an objective framework that will allow runologists to use a model to measure magical communication specific to the Elder Futhark tradition.

Review article of Anatoly Liberman, In Prayer and Laughter: Essays on Medieval Scandinavian and Germanic Mythology, Literature, and Culture (publ. 2015). Moscow: Paleograph Press. In Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis 22, 1 (2018) 141-146.

Review article of Irene Losquiño, The Early Runic Inscriptions: Their Western Features (publ. 2015). Berkeley Insights in Linguistics and Semiotics, Volume 92. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc. in Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis 22, 2 (2017) 241-247.

Dual gender nouns in German are said to carry multiple genders and depending on the gender that is used, their meaning is differentiated. In this paper, I use the theory of Minimalism and the Feature Conservation Principle to show that so-called "dual gender" nouns do not really have multiple genders; only one uninterpretable gender feature is allowed per lexical entry. Uninterpretable gender features found on the noun are what create separate lexical meanings, thereby making these entries syntactically distinct.

This dissertation addresses the issue of magical communication found in the Elder Futhark runic inscriptions. The study examines the Kragehul Spear Shaft (DR 196), Björketorp runestone (DR 360), the Horn(s) of Gallehus (DR 12), Gummarp runestone (DR 358), Lindholm amulet (DR 261), Straum whetstone (KJ 50), Ribe skull fragment (DR EM85; 151B), the Noleby runestone (KJ 67), and the Eggja runestone (N KJ 101). It seeks magical communication which may putatively be encompassed by my proposed law of magical semiosis, which reads:

<<While operating within an Umwelt where we assume magic is a phaneron in the Weltanschauung of the Runemaster, he or she intentionally manipulates signs and sign-relations within a sign-network by the use of icons (like produces like), indices (contagious properties) and/or symbols (learned conceptual properties). While there will be more than one sign within the sign-network, it is the magical sign which is the most salient when working with such an object. This includes—but is not limited to—phonetic iconicity, semantic iconicity, indexical curses, iconic theophany formulas whereby the Runemaster becomes a god (degrees of iconicity), mythic reenactments, Begriffsrunen (symbolic indexical icons), and certain word-formulae especially alu ‘ecstatic state’ (disputed).>>

I argue that, by setting objective parameters for measuring this law of magical communication, we can then determine whether or not a particular inscription should be understood as magical or non-magical specific to the Umwelt and Weltanschauung of the Runemaster. Essentially, this dissertation is meant to challenge runologists in postulating falsifiable criteria so we may, in an academic setting, discuss magical communication in the world of the Runemaster.

This study begins by discussing how Charles Sanders Peirce can help provide us with a basic framework regarding the sign. His phenomenological framework is applied to the world of the Runemaster. The next section then addresses the problem with the word “magic,” which goes far beyond the concept of “if it does not make sense, it must be magical.” It then leads to a discussion of runes and numinous qualities and finally to a corpus chapter which applies the theories and methods I have adopted.