ABSTRACT
FROM a primeval age, when there were giants in the northern lands, 1 2 long, that is, before the Latin letters were invented and before Carmenta reached the mouth of the Tiber from Greece and set foot with Evander on Roman soil, drove out the Aborigines, and taught manners and literacy to the ignorant and wholly rustic people, the kingdoms of the North had a script of their own. Evidence of this is furnished by stones of extraordinary size attached to the tombs and caverns of the ancients. 2 If anyone doubts that this was accomplished by the strength of giants in very early times, let him go there and see greater and more staggering wonders than any piece of writing could promise or provide. So, as my dearest brother and predecessor, Johannes Magnus, archbishop of Uppsala, tells in Bk I, Ch. 7, of his History, by inscribing on these stones the exploits they performed, they have passed them on to everlasting memory. 3 4 Some also, for their private reckonings, used various figures of animals for letters, as the Egyptians did, and to this day they do so with their own native resourcefulness, as I shall shortly describe below. Similar carvings may be looked at even now on old obelisks at Rome, in which single characters stood for single words; for example a wolf meant ‘miserly’, a fox ‘artful’, and a bee ‘king’, because the governor of the people ought to wield the sting of justice tempered with the honey of mercy. 4
Northern giants
Letters of northern peoples more ancient
Letters carved on stones
Egyptian letters
Wolf Fox. Bee Sting of justice, honey of mercy
