The use of different languages and alphabets is not surprising in the globalized society we live in. In our cities, we encounter signs, posters, and advertisements with messages written in multiple languages and sometimes different writing systems. We are used to seeing, for example, English on signs at airports independently of where we are in the world, Italian on the menu at our favorite pizzeria, and Japanese at sushi bars. The choice of language and writing system in such cases is not random. On the contrary, it says something about those who have written the message, for example, their competence in multiple languages and writing systems, and about the language proficiency of the intended audience of the message. A certain language choice can also depend on the purpose of the message, which can be a practical one – as at an airport – but can also be about wanting to construct and show a certain identity and cultural affiliation with the help of linguistic resources.
Although we may primarily associate multilingualism and multiliteracy with modern society, these phenomena already existed during the Middle Ages. About a thousand years ago, a radical change began in the use of writing in the Scandinavian societies, which involved the introduction of a new language and a new alphabet, namely Latin and the Roman letters. The spread of Latin is a phenomenon that at various times affected all of Europe, but Scandinavia constitutes a particularly interesting example of how this process took place. There, the Latin script culture met a several-hundred-year-old local written tradition based on the use of the Nordic ancient languages and runes. Some of society's strata thus went from being monolingual to being multilingual and "multiliterate." But how did this transition happen? What happened when Latin met the Nordic languages and when the Roman alphabet met the runes? Did the two traditions influence each other, and if so, how? Who used one tradition or the other, and why?
This project investigated these questions by examining phenomena of language and script mixing in Nordic medieval inscriptions. When Latin and Roman letter letters began to spread, they could be mixed with the local languages and the runes in different ways in one and the same text. For example, there are inscriptions that start in Latin and with Roman letter letters and then transition to Old Norse and runes. In other cases, the texts are entirely composed in Latin or Old Norse, but different parts are inscribed with different alphabets. Another thing that occurs is that the inscribers changed alphabets, for example, from letters to runes in the middle of a word. By analyzing which language and which writing system the inscribers chose and how different languages and alphabets were arranged visually, we can reveal how competent the writers were in one or the other language and alphabet, and to whom they addressed their messages. In a similar way to the restaurant owner who uses Italian to signal affiliation with a particular culture or the advertising agency that uses English to connect with an international audience, we can access the medieval inscribers’ cultural and ideological purposes behind the use of a certain language or writing system
