Feels like the contrastive sense of 'but' is getting weakened in content creator speak: youtube.com/shorts/Wk1rL...

Exciting international #runic event in Kirkwall, Monday 20 October 2025. Free, open to all, and with refreshments! #runes #runology #Orkney

Back working on South Ronaldsay field names after a long break

Another lovely day in #Eday looking at #PlaceNames & talking to folk. Collected 40 field names, some of which I can't see recordered elsewhere! On another note, here is The Graand (a common #Orkney name) ON grand 'sand/gravel bank, slope', typically a spit of rocky beach projecting into the sea.

The Fall of Arthur and The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún : A Metrical Review of Three Modern English Alliterative Poems works.hcommons.org/records/x4dc...

Heard a new-to-me Orcadian metathesis today to add to modren and pattren: Westren

Unsure about scansion of 3rd line. For Type D it would need to be //\x. Could be a transcription error. But would we expect -ir to carry secondary stress? Don't know how I'd scan it. mælir could resolve but that wouldn't help. ?E, with secondary stress on mæl- & stress on þú @rhunedhel.bsky.social

Scans of Bliss's An Introduction to Old English Metre: www.paddletrips.net/beowulf/html...

Tolkien's development as a writer of alliterative poetry in modern English

Get in quick and you could be the third person to write in #Tvísætt

A new-to-me mind melting Icelandic metre en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sl%C3%A...

This is still a bit of a fudge as the internal rhymes should fall on stressed syllables. 4 internal rhymes in 6 metrical positions is possible in Old Norse, as in Háttatal 43, but in Scots or English it's a real challenge. An 8 syllable metre like hrynhent might be the way to go

An Old Norse taught be Dr Ryder Patzuk Russell. Ryder is excellent! Please share. www.paideiainstitute.org/introduction...

Sorry to folk that have dm'd me but I'm not giving bsky any more of my data

Both the video and the article are really interesting. Tail-stave fornyrðislag is easy enough to imagine. I wonder what dróttkvætt would look like. Keep the final cadence but make it iambic?

follow the thing methodologies normally trace the global flows of food products. here i use that methodology to trace the global flow of an idea - the word gap - and how teachers get positioned as consumers who have the ability to both reproduce and resist dominant ideologies about language.

Author copy arrived the day

Asked ChatGPT about dróttkvætt variants and it hallucinated the two: Tvísætt (double-set metre) – doubles the internal rhyme scheme, requiring both aðalhending and skothending in each half-line. Glæstisnið – combines hrynhent with strict end-rhymes, alliteration, and internal rhymes.

Gairsay, home of Sveinn Ásleifarson in the #Saga of the Earls of #Orkney!... Will we see the caves in which he hid from Earl Haraldr as we pass Greenholm!? open.substack.com/pub/uonengli...

Cumaibh 14mh–16mh Iuchar 2026 airson Rannsachadh na Gàidhlig aig Oilthigh Ghlaschu. Gairm phàipearan & fiosrachadh clàraidh uile ri thighinn. Hold 14th–16th July 2026 for the Rannsachadh na Gàidhlig conference at the University of Glasgow. Call for Papers & Registration information all to follow.

Should you happen to be in Kirkwall on Saturday the 25th of October, do come and say hello in the Orcadian Bookshop!

That's more like it. Used a digital terrain model this time rather than a digital surface model (which has trees).

Check this oot! I've been able to extract height values from a LiDAR image and create a cool wee 90s-esque wireframe model from it in R. (The wireframe is just a Brucie Bonus - the real value is getting quantifiable data.) QGIS steps and R code over on our FB: www.facebook.com/groups/95453...

This was fun! We're so pleased with how they turned out!

@grahamscheper.bsky.social interviews Geoffrey Russom on his theory of how alliterative verse works in Beowulf -- and how meter is related to syntax. www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYf6...

An Orkney dróttkvætt þula. I've included alternating pairs of aðalhending to the third syllables (bold/italics). As far as I'm aware, that's not a feature seen elsewhere. #auldnorse

Film #100 is 🥁... The Proposal Thanks for the recommendations. Please keep them coming

Just watched my 99th film since starting Letterboxd last year. And recommendations for the 100th?

Nice bit of written Orcadian on FB. Teen is 'taken'. I have taen in my South West dialect; I've heard some folk from there say tooken as well

Twa Corbies has previously appeared in a footnote on Word Family Friday: www.aidanem.com/word-family-... 😁 re: the word "hausebane"

🚨Annooncement!🚨 Here yer #Scotstober 2025 wirds! A'm sharin on aw platforms, but maistly follaein on BlueSky this year. A'm luikin forret tae yer warks 😁 Wirds as text ablow

Up late, but managed to squeeze in Roundhay Garden Scene before bed en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundha...

ON dys occurs in many #Orkney #PlaceNames incl. Disher (N. Ronaldsay) where it appears in the plural, Geo of Dishan (Egilsay) where the ending appears to retain the ON definite article & Milly-dissan & The Disses o’ the Holm (both Holm of Papay) the first applying to a fishing mark! (Marwick)

Nyow is a bold spelling choice. The only example I can see in SND is from 1503: vi hattis … ii of tham of the nyow fasson and iiii of the ald fasson

Other half was at parent council so I finally got round to watching Fitzcaraldo

Just about ten years now in the making: The IE-CoR database paper has finally been published. C. Anderson, M. Scarborough, [ ... 96 further authors ... ], R. Gray & P. Heggarty. 2025. The Indo-European Cognate Relationships Dataset. Scientific Data 12:1541.

Dia dhaoibh, a chairde! The Northern Ireland Place-Name Project has just landed on Bluesky. We will be sharing stories, history and a few surprises behind our local place-names. Do you have ideas on what type of content you would like to see? Maps, archives or just fun facts? Let us know below 😀

We are the Northern Ireland Place-Name Project, based in Irish & Celtic Studies at QUB since 1987. Funded by DfC since 2023, we research the origins and meanings of local names and support councils with Irish forms for signage. Explore our searchable corpus at placenamesni.org.

Graffiti Gàidhlig ann an Dùn Èideann - le sgaradh-bheachd air ceist an Ear-Mheadhanaich

Insane safety warning for Letters from Father Christmas on Amazon

openreach van in Orkney. They've cut us off their map

Put shelves up. Think this is going to be the only organised section.

For those interested, a recording of my Groam House lecture from Tues night is now available (link in replies). I identified what I think may be an overlooked early medieval text from northern Pictland, and substantially re-interpreted the career of Curetán. Interested to hear anyone's thoughts.

Old Norse gedda 'pike', which appears in this verse, was borrowed into Scots (and Middle English). It turns up in a few Kirkcudbrightshire place-names: Ged Point, Ged Burn & Ged Strand.

In one Norse saga, there's a reference to an event happening "und Harvaðafjöllum" – 'under the Harvaða mountains'. This unique mention of "Harvaða" is thought to refer to the Carpathian Mountains, from a borrowing of Latin Carpatēs so old that it shows the effects of Grimm's law on the C, P and T.