Hello swedish mates!
Recently I saw a gravure of a burnt astronomical clock of the Uppsala Cathedral. This gravure shows very strange symbols at the bottom of clock face. I’ve never heard of these symbols, I’ve found anything about them yet, but some of them look like a runes, but some not. Friends, tell me please, what are these symbols and what is their purpose?
Link:
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Petrus_Astronomus_Astronomical_clock_in_Uppsala_Cathedral.jpg
4 comments
They sorta resembles runes from the futhark, but not really.
My guess would be that they represent the planets.
Hm. Looks like it could be the symbols for the known planets at the time? Showing their movement.
As a Catholic swede it’s great to see a picture of this clock. Such a shame it burned down. The monks were truly ahead of their time.
I found this information in Swedish, that I have Google translated below.
https://www.astro.uu.se/library/Instruments/GH-ur.pdf
”The lower, only half visible painting can show eight of the nineteen symbols of the golden number, from which the church calculated when Easter would fall, that is, which Sunday was the first Sunday after the first full moon after March 21. During years with the same golden age, the lunar phases fall on the same date.
The pointer points to the F-rune, the first rune in the rune row, which was this year’s golden number. If the dial with the golden numbers rotated one revolution per synodic month, the phases of the moon could be read between the first and third quarters in relation to the position of the solar image at the top center. When it was full moon, the pointer pointed straight down.
For each new year, the hand must be moved to the New Year’s golden number symbol. The golden rune symbols with 16 runes were used as golden number symbols and 3 special characters were added to get 19 symbols.”
It’s runes from the [medieval futhork](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_runes)