Archive for May 23rd, 2010

Scanner sheds light on hidden words in medieval manuscripts

Scholars at the University of Copenhagen are now able to decipher hidden and illegible texts in damaged medieval manuscripts thanks to a special scanner that was donated to the university.

Linguist Michael Lerche and his colleagues from the Department of Scandinavian Research used it to discover what were the runic letters on the cover of a 700-year-old medieval manuscript. In just a few minutes the scanner came up with the answer – an odd Latin proveb, which roughly translated says, “A countryman decided to adopt a strange habit: to put his legs in his wallet and walk on his teeth!”