Elisabeth Maria Magin

• Magin, Elisabeth Maria (2023). Data-based Runes: Macrostudies on the Bryggen Runic Inscriptions. Universitetet i Bergen. ISBN 9788293904021. 302 p. doi: 10.15845/bryggen.v100. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This volume of The Bryggen Papers focuses on the almost 700 runic inscriptions found over the course of the Bryggen excavations (1955-1979) in Bergen, Norway. The medieval inhabitants of Bergen inscribed runes onto a variety of materials: wooden sticks, bones, ceramics and even leather shoes. The topics they wrote about varied, ranging from religious invocations to vulgar descriptions of their fellow townspeople. Nor were these inscriptions static; it is possible to identify trends in the way inscriptions changed over time with the development of the medieval settlement, influenced by concurrent historical events. Information as to the potential geographic origins and social status of some of the carvers, who saw fit to record their names, can also be derived from the inscriptions. This interdisciplinary study exemplifies how the theoretical framework of relational databases can be utilised to support in-depth comparisons of runic inscriptions. Rather than being a more traditional study of the content of the inscriptions, it assesses the suitability of different data models and demonstrates how relational database management systems can become powerful tools for conducting runological research, benefiting the broader field of runology and epigraphic studies in general. The study also makes use of the digital format by directly linking to other runic databases to supplement the information provided here.

View all works in NVA

• Bonelli, Letizia; Magin, Elisabeth Maria & Riel, Sjoerd Joost van (2025). Combining Different Techniques for Documenting Medieval Runic Inscriptions. doi: 10.2312/DH.20253074. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This poster aims to discuss the limitations and benefits of different imaging techniques when capturing fine inscriptions on objects made of bone, wood and leather, with the explicit goal of producing models suitable for scientific study. The case study is conducted on a corpus of approximately 60 runic inscriptions from medieval Oslo, dating between the 11th and 13th centuries and will be published through the museums existing online web interfaces, Unimusportalen, and BItFROST.

• Magin, Elisabeth Maria (2024). Alternate Universes and Victorian Detectives: Sherlock Holmes Goes Medieval. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  “Medieval fanfiction”. “Fanfiction in Medieval Studies”. “How a medieval mystic was the first creator of fanfiction”. Whether as a course, conference panel or article, fanfiction theories have been adapted by literary scholars as a new lens through which they can analyse medieval literary works. Indeed, medieval literary culture and fanfiction share several common characteristics, and of course, medievalism in modern literature and media is a well-researched phenomenon as well. But what about medievalism in fanfiction? What about the more than 10,000 stories on Archive of Our Own tagged “Alternate Universe – Medieval”? They are not set in the Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones or even World of Warcraft universes. Instead, they were written in fandoms such as Star Wars, Sherlock or modern boy bands. It can strike one as curious. Why pick a modern franchise, then put it in a medieval setting? What are the kinds of “medieval” settings these authors see fit to tag as such? And how do they deal with the two frameworks they have to respect, the medieval world and the franchise’s canon on the other? Can such stories work? Based on a case study of fanfictions from the Sherlock fandom, this paper examines the broad range of uses of the term “medieval” and medievalism in fanfiction.

• Magin, Elisabeth Maria (2024). Let’s Start at the Start: Remodelling Runic Databases. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The presentation aims to give a comprehensive overview of the experience gained when attempting to model the workflow of a philologist working with medieval runic inscriptions as entities in a relational database – in order to develop a kind of all-purpose basic model for a runological research database, containing the basic information every runologist requires for their work, but offering enough flexibility to conduct research from the point of view of different disciplines. It outlines the process of comparing the models of already existing runic databases, the distillation of the basic “core” features these share and how they are modelled for the specific purposes they were built for, all of which contributed to the proposed new, extendable model. Lastly, it will show examples of analyses that can now be conducted using this new model.

• Magin, Elisabeth Maria (2024). LaTeχ Light – Introduction to Lyχ. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Choosing the right tool for the right task can be tricky, especially when we’re already familiar with a specific tool for a specific task, like writing and publishing papers. Many tend to use Microsoft Word, leading to a range of issues like compatibility. Better tools like LaTeX are available, offering a wide range of benefits, particularly for those submitting contributions to different journals with different requirements. LaTeX excels at * compiling bibliographies and outputting them according to different journal guidelines * changing the document style (font/margins/spacing) * automated numbering and linking of cross-references to tables/images/chapters * creating several different files out of the same basic document LaTeX Light is meant for everyone looking for alternatives to Microsoft Word, student or established academic; everyone who has spent hours adapting the bibliography to a different journal’s style or tried to stop the illustrations from messing up the formatting of the text. In six hours, this introductory course teaches up to 15 attendants how to write a structured text of any length – whether 5-page journal article or 15-chapter book – using LyX and compile it with LaTeX.

• Magin, Elisabeth Maria (2024). Preserved in Stone But Lost on Screen. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Runic inscriptions, despite being one of the most important sources for our knowledge of language changes, script development in the Germanic-speaking areas of Middle and Northern Europe and the only available written sources written by these peoples themselves, often remain at the periphery of research. This is due to a variety of reasons, but especially in modern times, an increasingly important factor is the digitisation (or lack thereof) of runic inscriptions. Not that attempts have not been made. As early as the late 1980s, first versions of what was to become Samnordisk Runtextdatabas, the currently most-used runic database by and for the runologist community, was developed, soon to be followed by the Kieler Runenprojekt and other projects. However, one issue remains: Despite all of them being runic databases, runes are suspiciously absent from the respective databases, and even high-quality images often are missing. This presentation focuses on the issues of modelling the two levels of what runologists refer to as “transcription” or “transrunification”, the transfer of the sign visible on an inscription carrier to the computer. It touches upon the problematic relationship between “observation” and “interpretation” and presents the current state of data modelling in the latest attempt at creating digital editions of runic inscriptions, which attempts to model the two levels so philologists, linguists and those studying scripts and characters rather than language can all use the same dataset to conduct their research – all while linking the textual data up to images for comparability.

• Magin, Elisabeth Maria (2023). Stepping Outside the Ivory Hall – Local Guides as Research Disseminators. Full text in Research Archive
• Magin, Elisabeth Maria & Smith, Marcus (2023). (R)Unicode: Encoding and Sustainability Issues in Runology. Full text in Research Archive
• Magin, Elisabeth Maria (2023). On Count of Rune: Unicode, Minimal Character Sets and Variation Encoding in Digital Runology. Full text in Research Archive
• Magin, Elisabeth Maria (2023). Runologie, Phonologie, Digitale Runologie. Full text in Research Archive
• Magin, Elisabeth Maria & Smith, Marcus (2023). (R)Unicode: Encoding and Sustainability Issues in Runology. Digital Humanities in the Nordic and Baltic Countries Publications (DHNB Publications). 5(1), p. 121–136. doi: 10.5617/dhnbpub.10657. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In this article, the basic premises of reading a runic inscription and transferring the data into digital formats are discussed. Particular attention will be on the Runic block in the Unicode standard for digital character encoding, which currently does not suit the needs of the academic runological community. The proposed solution builds upon the existing standard without adding unnecessary additional characters, but with the ability to encode form-variants on top of the base character while retaining backwards compatibility, an approach from which other archaic scripts like Cuneiform or Khitan that suffer of similar encoding issues, could also benefit.

View all works in NVA