Queen Iduna’s Letter Part 1 – Introduction

I call her Iduna in the title, so that Google will find my blog posts more easily 😀

There is surprisingly little online about the mysterious letter above, found in the Agnarr and Iðunn’s shipwreck in Frozen II. Maybe it’s because these aren’t runes, and therefore gather little attention from viewers who may be interested in Viking culture.

Speaking of, if you are interested in the runes used in Frozen (2013), check out Panya’s Blog. You can also see this video where the writer of these runes, Dr. Jackson Crawford, talks about them, and more about his experience consulting on Frozen.

And now, onward with the code at hand.

As can be seen, there are 5 horizontal rows of glyphs in the message: I will refer to them as line 1 to line 5 from top to bottom. There are also some symbols above these lines, set over 2 horizontal black bars – this I will refer to as line 0.

What type of script?

There is a little message penned in the top left corner of the paper/parchment (I can’t tell what material it is). It reads:

the end of the ice age
The river found but lost
Magic’s source. Elsa’s source?

This is Iðunn’s writing. But I am quite sure that it is not a decoded version of the glyphs below it.

In the first place, the glyphs do not appear to be an alphabet. There are too many glyphs for them to be a one-to-one representation of Iðunn’s writing, and there are too few repeated characters anywhere. The only obviously repeated glyphs I can see are the ‘person with arms raised, with the water spirit’s sign within’ on lines 1 and 3, near the ends respectively (and this one is repeated in different colours on the 5th line); and the ‘diamond with a dot in the middle’ (lines 4, 5). Oh, and the four spirits’ symbols recur throughout (air, water, fire, earth).

I instead think this is a pictographic system. Not even logographic, which is where certain glyphs have become rather ‘arbitrary’ in meaning. Of course, technically all glyphs are ‘arbitrary’, but some are more arbitrary than others. For example, the Latin numeral ‘iii’ is easier to guess as ‘three’ – there are three ‘i’s. This is rather ‘pictographic’. But the Latin numeral ‘iv’ is more ‘logographic’ – I would need to know that ‘v’ means ‘five’, and that the ‘i’ placed before it means ‘one less than’.

In short, I believe this letter is essentially written in pictures which all mean something unique. And because this letter is written in pictures, it is probably not reflective of any particular language. It is like a silent film that does not move – the events are up to us to interpret.

I will note one thing, however – certain glyphs sometimes appear again, but with a ‘box’ or a ‘background’ around them. I wonder if colouring different glyphs differently changes the meaning in a binary way? That is to say, if I wrote ‘A‘ (in blue), does that mean ‘not A’ (in black) or ‘to A’ or something related to a base meaning of ‘A’?

What is the reading direction?

It is probably not read from top to bottom and then horizontally, because the glyphs do not line up vertically, only horizontally. In fact, looking very closely at the image, we can see faint ‘bars’ across lines 2 and 4 which have slightly different background colouration than lines 1, 3, and 5.

It is very natural to think that the reading direction should be from left to right, and then from top to bottom. This is how majority of the world’s scripts are read nowadays, after the model of every European language. Especially considering the movie was written mainly by Americans, and set in Norway.

However, the lines’ meanings seem to suggest that this writing is not so straightforwardly left to right, top to bottom. I cannot help but wonder if I should read it bottom-to-top. Or maybe in some weird sequence that jumps between lines. The more I think about the glyphs, the more I feel like the top line describes the end of Frozen II, while the bottom line describes the ending of Frozen. It’s just a hunch, but I’ll explain more when I next analyse the letter line by line.

What’s the message about?

If I had to guess, the message was a prophecy. Specifically, a prophecy about the events of Frozen and Frozen II.

Iðunn may have realised this, but, not understanding the script, set out to ask the spirit in Ahtohallan what it meant. Unfortunately, she and her husband were lost at sea.

And indeed, if we were to consider this a prophecy about the events of the 2 Frozen movies, how could Iðunn or Agnarr have guessed what it meant? It is only with the benefit of hindsight and understanding of the movies that I can even try to piece together the story being told in the letter.

But there is one glyph I am particularly drawn to. It is this one:

This, to me, shows a figure wearing a dress raising its arms. Within the figure, there is the symbol of the water spirit. Above the figure, the symbols of the fire, wind, and earth spirits are arranged from left to right, and the centre symbol on line 0 is directly in line with the centre of the figure’s head.

I cannot help but think that the circled glyph represents Elsa. And this seems to express her command over the other three spirits, as a representative of the Spirit of Knowledge (see my older post for more info).

Stay tuned for the next part!

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