[Friday Weirdness] Tolkien Graffiti

[Rich H]

As if Gandalf vs Gandhi last week wasn't bad enough...

My journey back from work to home is normally fairly dull and samey. However, I was on the train and staring rather blankly into space, when I noticed some writing etched into the back of the seat in front of me. Tutting in a way only a plus-40-something can about the youth of today it suddenly struck me that the graffiti was a set of symbols rather than just the usual emotional adolescent outburst of 'Gav Luvs Trace'; which appeared to be very familiar:


[Image cropped in order to post here]



I mean, that does look like Dwarven rune writing doesn't it?!?! Ref:



I've not had time to translate (assuming it does) as I'm gaming soon but we seem to have an altogether better class of vandal on the Cross Country train line (Edinburgh to Portsmouth). I don't know whether to be immensely proud of the effort or crushed that the Professor's work is being used for such (assumption) crude expressions!

[uhu79]

That's really strange cause I've seen similar on a train in Austria. However, I was not as clever as you to take a picture! Can this be a coincidence?

[Stormcrow]

The image is too fuzzy for me to make out most of the characters. Are you sure they're Cirth and not Anglo-Saxon runes?

[Majestic]

Rich's Friday posts seems to be becoming a regular occurrence. Now the challenge is on to find something weird (or fun) for us every Friday, sir!

[Wbweather]

Definitely looks like Anglo-Saxon runes. Fuzzy, but sort of looks like it says "gragais".

[Rich H]

Yeah, apols for fuzzy image - phone isn't amazing and I wasn't carrying a pen and paper so couldn't actually write the things down. Working from memory I think the closest approximation to the runes I posted would be:



Which doesn't make much sense to me, so they're likely not Cirth but Anglo-Saxon like some have said.

Whether Cirth or Anglo-Saxon though it's pretty odd to see on the back of a train seat.

[uhu79]

Hmm, I thought you are presenting a nicely prepared prank on 1st of April, so I played along. So no runes in Austrian trains afaik, sorry

[Stormcrow]

As Anglo-Saxon runes those would say one of these (allowing for your uncertain letters):

drægois
drogois
drægæis
drægois

[Rich H]

Hmm, I thought you are presenting a nicely prepared prank on 1st of April, so I played along. So no runes in Austrian trains afaik, sorry

... Shocking behaviour.

[Rich H]

As Anglo-Saxon runes those would say one of these (allowing for your uncertain letters):

drægois
drogois
drægæis
drægois

Cool. Still none-the-wiser, here! ... Wonder if those are close to what the person writing it wanted or was trying to do.