Greenpoint
Lorven Pharmacy
Culture on the Cheap
From The New York Shitty Inbox: Greenpoint Orcs?
Kevin Gillespie (the person who shot the above photographs) writes (in an email entitled elves and orcs on eckford and leonard):
hey miss heather, i think we’re about to be thrust in the middle of some kind of ancient battle of monsters and magic folk… or just an itchy case of dork-rash. some uh– person– is tagging in what looks like elvish. i found the first set on leonard and norman and the second on eckford and nassau. i would have translated these myself with the power of the internet but im a 31 year old man.
Indeed. If anyone out there is up to translating the above missives please leave your findings in the comments. Inquiring Greenpoint humans want to know!
Miss Heather
UPDATE, 5:54 p.m.: Here are two more examples of this mystery writing courtesy of Bitchcakes (see comments).
Comments
11 Comments on From The New York Shitty Inbox: Greenpoint Orcs?
-
barek176 on
Mon, 4th May 2009 10:10 am
-
Seskow on
Mon, 4th May 2009 12:00 pm
-
Seskow on
Mon, 4th May 2009 12:19 pm
-
bitchcakes on
Mon, 4th May 2009 2:02 pm
-
zlehmann on
Mon, 4th May 2009 2:07 pm
-
yagugulee on
Mon, 4th May 2009 3:33 pm
-
missheather on
Mon, 4th May 2009 4:35 pm
-
travis on
Mon, 4th May 2009 5:29 pm
-
Greenpoint Graffiti - ANIMAL on
Thu, 7th May 2009 3:21 pm
-
NYHILIST on
Fri, 8th May 2009 2:02 am
-
Newtown Grafiti « The Newtown Pentacle on
Mon, 22nd Jun 2009 10:48 pm
The first one says “The secret of the round ones” (?? WTF ??) and the second one could be a badly misspelled German version of Veni Vidi Vici (I came, I saw, I conquered).
Yup, weird.
Looks like the work of aspiring neo-Nazis.
I’m sure others will have pointed this out by now, but both of these refer to a book by an Austrian mysticist named Guido von List, according to Wikipedia. The book, Das Geheimnis der Runen (ie, the graffiti in the first picture) continues to influence and inspire neo-Nazis, from which they derive the phrase “Sal und Sig” (the graffiti in the second photo) which I think means “Salvation and Victory.”
Miss Heather, I found 2 more of these today! Hopefully Barek176 can interpret them as well. Check your inbox.
barek176 – I would like to know where you got your info from.
I looked into all the nerdy books I owned and the internet, but from what I saw that set of characters doesn’t exist. It looks like some old english runes that get used a lot for video games and was the inspiration for Tolkien’s Dwarven language, but there are characters that don’t show up in the texts I have.
Either there is another set of runic languages that look very similar to this or the tagger got some of his runes incorrect.
Based on my googling, these have a somewhat more nefarious backstory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Geheimnis_der_Runen
Sal und Sig = Sal-vation and victory [Heil und Sieg (here we see the origins of the chant used by the Germanen Orden, which later became a National Socialist motto: Sieg Heil!, ‘Hail Victory!’)]. This millennia-old Aryan ogreeting and battle cry is also again found in a variant form in the widespread call of inspiration: ‘Alaf Sal Fena’. “ Well-being and victory (S. A. Kummer)
Will put them up ASAP. Thanks!
The second set are both the von List “Armanen runes” in order:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armanen_runes
[…] New York Post runs a graffiti story from New York Shitty today, simply confirming the Greenpoint-based blog’s observations and comments with an expert […]
I would go for the nefarious backstory. I immediately thought of the Thor Steinar runes controversy.
Godwin’s law graffiti. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Steinar
[…] a comment » Ms. Heather over at NYshitty recently ran a piece on some interesting runic grafiti found in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Examination by her extensive network revealed a sinister meaning to […]
Tell me what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!
You must be logged in to post a comment.
NYS Flickr Pool
