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Helm of Fuþark

Golfball printer helmet
  (+25, -2)(+25, -2)(+25, -2)
(+25, -2)
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A helmet in the faux-viking style studded with the sixteen Scandinavian runes. Smear them in ink, then head-butt the surface to be printed upon strategically to produce your inscription.

Scandinavian because there are only sixteen of them, allowing them to be placed in more easily remembered and accessed places around the helmet.

nineteenthly, Feb 23 2009

Horned Helmets http://en.wikipedia.../wiki/Horned_helmet
It just ain't so. [DrBob, Feb 24 2009]

Phaistos Disc http://en.wikipedia.../wiki/Phaistos_Disc
Very early printing [nineteenthly, Feb 25 2009]

[link]






       While using the helm, one must remember to stick to shorter words and succinct and to-the-point sentences. Runes tend to inspire sagas and long, broody soliloquies that will end in concussions no matter how well you pad the helm. [+]
Veho, Feb 23 2009
  

       Belike would the skald's skill sink with the blows of the wood-shield upon his brain-bowl.
nineteenthly, Feb 23 2009
  

       Don't the horns get in the way?
pertinax, Feb 23 2009
  

       Horns are for punctuation.
loonquawl, Feb 23 2009
  

       //Horns are for punctuation.// Not if you're a snail - in that case, they're for seeing, and hosting parasitic flukes.
zen_tom, Feb 23 2009
  

       You could maybe have sixteen horns, each with a rune on the end.
nineteenthly, Feb 23 2009
  

       + love it!
xandram, Feb 23 2009
  

       Ah, Sptang Yoga'll sort that.
nineteenthly, Feb 23 2009
  

       I think of it as more like springs. Only wimps have tendons.
nineteenthly, Feb 23 2009
  

       We men are all robots. You do know that, right?
nineteenthly, Feb 23 2009
  

       "Seriously", simply marking a surface with ink wouldn't need much force, though the constant varied movements of the neck would probably not be too good for the relevant muscles. More forceful action would be required to make a deep impression on a resistant surface. My solution is to have an entire suit of armour with runes on it. Sixteen runes distributed over one's entire body would be easier. I like this because it would mean an armoured individual pounding a table with their fists in order to write.   

       Oddly, though my family is from Glasgow, i have never headbutted anyone deliberately.
nineteenthly, Feb 23 2009
  

       A properly delivered head-butt, forehead to nose or temple, doesn't require much force, no more than heading a soccer (foot)ball. A Hollywood head-butt forehead to forehead, and may the strongest skull win, is going to hurt no matter what you do.
MechE, Feb 24 2009
  

       //Don't the horns get in the way?//

Weren't no horns on Viking helmets. That's Hollywood that you're thinking of.
DrBob, Feb 24 2009
  

       "We" did wear them ceremonially, supposedly, and writing sagas and the like is surely a ceremonial activity. I think there should be two styles, one with sixteen horns and one with none but studded with runes, so you can choose.
nineteenthly, Feb 24 2009
  

       Russian letters would be better...
madness, Feb 24 2009
  

       Or the Klingon alphabet, maybe?
Veho, Feb 24 2009
  

       //the constant varied movements of the neck would probably not be too good for the relevant muscles//   

       A daisy-wheel style rotating helmet could be in order - twist to the required rune and nod forwards each time. Would also allow automatic re-inking, and a two-horn arrangement [+] for possibly the most ridiculous (in a good way, of course) method of communication I have ever seen.
MadnessInMyMethod, Feb 24 2009
  

       Thanks, [MadnessInMyMethod]. I don't know about a daisywheel. I think the high-techiness of the daisywheel clashes with the low-techiness of the vikingity of it all, but yes in a way. Maybe it'd be better with oghams.
nineteenthly, Feb 24 2009
  

       I'm surprised the Vikings never thought of this themselves, and not just for helmets--for gauntlets and your various blunt objects or the hilt of your sword or ax or what-have-you. Just so you could leave your rune of your clan imprinted on your victims' skulls. [+]
Eugene, Feb 25 2009
  

       I don't know how long branding has been around, but it's a little similar. There's also the Phaistos Disc.
nineteenthly, Feb 25 2009
  

       //I'm surprised the Vikings never thought of this themselves//   

       Maybe they did - and they were so hard they face-typed on granite.
Loris, Feb 25 2009
  

       I was about to say something sarcastic like "What with? Diamond?", but it turns out that granite actually isn't that hard. It seems to be about six on the Mohs scale, so yes, [Loris], maybe they did.
nineteenthly, Feb 25 2009
  

       Well, as i have previously mentioned, we're all robots and my forehead is made of titanium carbide. The only thing that happens when i headbutt granite is a twanging sound from my brain suspension.
nineteenthly, Feb 25 2009
  

       Bish, bash, boink, croissant! Excellent idea.
xenzag, Feb 25 2009
  

       Obligatory Futurama reference: About thirty percent of the entire thickness of the armour plating, [_on_cloud_], like everything else.
nineteenthly, Feb 25 2009
  

       //Weren't no horns on Viking helmets. That's Hollywood that you're thinking of.//   

       Aye, documentaries such as History of the World Part II clearly reveal that the horns were on the vikings, and not on their helmets.
ye_river_xiv, Feb 25 2009
  

       The robot Bender constantly claims to be thirty percent of various different metals, for instance zinc, iron and titanium, if i remember rightly.
nineteenthly, Feb 26 2009
  

       Now you just need to recreate the works of Shakespeare by sitting a thousand monkeys adorned with these helms at a thousand slabs of granite.
mitxela, Feb 28 2009
  

       : þ   

       Quit it! You're rune-ing it!   

       How does it deal with typos?
placid_turmoil, Mar 01 2009
  

       With the little-known runic control characters, such as "eyða".
nineteenthly, Mar 01 2009
  

       //little-known runic control characters// Thank you for that, [19thly] [+]
pertinax, Mar 02 2009
  

       Old Norse words are quite short, on the whole. I'm no fan of Nordic runes, but there are too many runes in the Anglo-Saxon and elder fuþorcas, and their words are longer. However, the redundancy in Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon is about the same. Later on, there was a lot of doubling up in Scandinavian runes, and tones developed as in Chinese, so the same words can have different meanings to a greater extent than in English. Also, they express "the" with suffixes.
nineteenthly, Mar 02 2009
  

       Danish isn't quite the same as the others because it uses a glottal stop where Swedish and Norwegian use tones to distinguish between otherwise identical-sounding words. I think also, and i might be wrong here, that the southerly parts of Denmark don't use the glottal stop either. Mit dansk er også bedrøvelig - my Danish is also dreadful.
nineteenthly, Mar 02 2009
  

       Ja, und eigentlich einst habe ich meistens auf deutsch gesprochen, aber jetzt ist es nicht so gut wie vorher. Es war gar eine Zeit als (?) ich übersetzt habe, und meine Kinder ein paar Wörter sprechen, obwohl nicht genug. Jetzt, leider, ist es total scheiß. Es hat geschehen wegen meiner Freundin, die Deutscherin war (und ist), und später habe ich einige deutsche Philosophe studiert zur Universität.
nineteenthly, Mar 02 2009
  

       @nineteenthly : // Deutscherin // this is great stuff! the rest of the sentence was near perfect, and this error is wonderful in its own right. A lot of german titles can be made female by the suffix '-in', and i just now realized that 'ein Deutscher' (a german) is one of the exceptions. 'eine Deutsche' would have been the correct form.
loonquawl, Mar 03 2009
  

       Ja, ]loonquawl[, und danke. Das kann ich jetzt begreife. Ich glaube, daß der Regel ist, daß wenn das Wort ein Hauptwort das auch ein Adjektiv ist, ist es so dekliniert. Vor ein paar Jahren habe ich meiner ehemaligen (Fehler?) Freundin eine Postkarte geschrieben, und sie sagte, daß es ganz schlechter war, als wenn wir zusammen war.   

       Yes, [loonquawl], i can see that now. I think the rule is something like an adjective being used as a noun. I wrote my ex a postcard a couple of years ago and she said my German was a lot worse than it used to be when we were together.   

       ]Auf_Wolke_Nummer_Neun[, danke auch. Ja, französisch gefällt mir auch nicht - zu wenige Wörter u.s.w. Deutsch ist viel besser. Dein Deutsch ist toll! Ich habe gefunden, daß der beste Weg, eine fremde Sprache zu lernen, ist ein(e) Freund(in) des anderen Geschlecht kennenzulernen. Als ich zur Schule war, habe ich nichts von der Sprache gelernt. Danach, mit meiner Freundin, war es ganz leicht.
nineteenthly, Mar 03 2009
  

       Lustiges Material auch bablefish für den Gewinn, gebe ich dieser Idee komplette Daumen auf   

       I speak german not at all :P
xxobot, Mar 03 2009
  

       Izvinitye, moi drugi, no, is it just me suretomo kono babel fish wa on the blink again desu ka? Stupid warranty, ou po pot emoi to kreguon eipas!   

       {blue smoke starts to curl from left ear}   

       Battery pack foutu, je crois.
pertinax, Mar 05 2009
  

       Merry material also bablefish for the profit, I give up to this idea complete thumbs
loonquawl, Mar 05 2009
  

       Manchmal ist es leichter eine Sprache zu verstehen, als es zu sprechen oder schreiben ist. Die wichtige Sachen über diese Sprache sind, daß sie in der Nähe von unserer eigene Sprache ist. Denk mal von der Weise, daß Shakespeare und der Bibel geschrieben ist. Nimm die französichen Wörter weg. Nimm dann die Buchstaben wie t, k, p u.s.w., und veränder sie zu ss, ch und ff im Mitten der Wörter und z, ch (?) und pf am Anfang, z.B.. Man hat endlich eine ziemliche seltsame Sprache, die ganz gleich der desutschen Sprache ist, und es wird viel leichter, echte Deutsch zu lernen wenn man das macht.
Boringly, if you look at the likes of the ancestors of Dutch, English, German and the other western Germanic languages, and compare them to the various varieties of Old Norse, English is actually the most Scandinavian, and was made more Scandinavian by the Vikings invasion.
nineteenthly, Mar 05 2009
  

       //Merry material also bablefish for the profit, I give up to this idea complete thumbs//   

       And that is why I don't use Babel fish to speak to Japanese exchange students...   

       I thought it was close enough though: P I did translate it back to English beforehand... but the 'also' didn't come into it like that...
xxobot, Mar 06 2009
  
      
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