Birch bark letter no. 292
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The Birch bark letter given the document number 292, found in 1957 in excavations in Novgorod, is the oldest known document in any Finnic language. The document is dated to the beginning of the 13th century.
The language used in the document is thought to be an archaic form of the language spoken in Olonets Karelia, a dialect of the Karelian language. [1]
[edit] Transcription
The text is written in Cyrillic alphabet in the Karelian dialect of the archaic Finnish or Finnic language. A transcription of the Cyrillic text is as follows:
юмолануолиїнимижи ноулисѣханолиомобоу юмоласоудьнииохови
The text, as transliterated to the Latin alphabet by J. S. Yeliseyev and interpreted in modern Finnish:
jumolanuoli ï nimizi nouli se han oli omo bou jumola soud'ni iohovi
Jumalannuoli, kymmenen [on] nimesi Tämä nuoli on Jumalan oma Tuomion-Jumala johtaa.
In English, this means roughly the following:
God's arrow, ten [is] thy name This arrow is God's own The Doom-God leads.
As the orthography used does not utilize spaces between words, the source text can be rendered into words in different ways. Martti Haavio gives a different interpretation of the text in his 1964 article:
jumolan nuoli inimizi nouli sekä n[u]oli omo bou jumola soud'nii okovy
Jumalan nuoli, ihmisen nuoli sekä nuoli oma. [ Tuomion jumalan kahlittavaksi.]
In English, this means roughly the following:
God's arrow, man's arrow, and (his) own arrow. [ To be chained by the Doom-God.]
[edit] References
- Jelisejev, J. S. Vanhin itämerensuomalainen kielenmuistomerkki, Virittäjä-lehti 1961: 134
- Jelisejev, J. S. Itämerensuomalaisia kielenmuistomerkkejä (Zusammenfassung: Ostseefinnische Sprachdenkmäler), Virittäjä-lehti 1966: 296 [2]
- Martti Haavio The Letter on Birch-Bark No. 292, Journal of the Folklore Institute, 1964
- Haavio, Martti, Tuohikirje n:o 292. Vanha suomalaisen muinaisuskonnon lähde, Virittäjä-lehti 1964: 1 [3]
