Siglas poveiras: Difference between revisions

Siglas Poveiras that serve as a base to most used symbols.

The siglas poveiras also known as marcas (marks) are considered a proto-writing system because they are a very rudimentary visual communication system used by the fishermen of Póvoa de Varzim in Portugal throughout the centuries. To write these symbols, a razor was used and they were normally written on wood, but sometimes were painted on boats and beach sheds.

The siglas were used until very recently. Their development is attributed to Vikings that settled in the town more than a thousand years ago and this form of primitive writing developed in the fishermen community of Póvoa de Varzim. These runes were used as family coat-of-arms or signature, primarily to mark family belongings. They are still very similar to a Scandinavian tradition of using specific bomärken ("homestead marks") for signatures and for marking property.

In the past, the siglas were also used to remember things, and they have been known as Póvoa's "writing system". Used because many fishermen did not know how to write in the Latin alphabet, siglas thus acquired great utility. Merchants used them in their books of credit, for example, and the siglas were read as we today read a name written in the Latin alphabet.

1. is the mark of the Icelander Ormur Ketilsson (1369), 2. is the mark of the Icelander Þórður Snorrason (1439), 3. is the mark of the Swedish court judge Sweder Scalle (1413) and 4. is the mark of a stonemason in Uppsala Cathedral, Sweden

The Siglas were first studied by António de Santos Graça in his book Epopeia dos Humildes ("The Odyssey of the Humble"). Published in 1952, the book contains hundreds of siglas and the history and maritime tragedy of Póvoa. These runes can still be found in the new Igreja Matriz of Póvoa de Varzim (mother church since 1757) and in the Lapa Church, in the Chapel of Santa Cruz (in the parish of Balazar) and in some religious places in Northwest Iberian Peninsula (mainly in Minho region, but also in Spain, where the inhabitants of Póvoa loved to travel and pray, leaving their marks so other inhabitants who would visit the place in the future would know they had been there). The siglas are still used, but less often by some families. A table in the old Church of Misericórdia that had the function of a mother church until 1757 kept thousands of siglas that would aid in a deeper study of the siglas poveiras, but these were destroyed when the church was demolished. The poveiros (inhabitants of Póvoa de Varzim) wrote their sigla in the table of the mother church when they got married, as a way of memorializing the event.

The siglas were not simply invented; these were passed on through generations. The base family sigla was passed from the father to the youngest son, in Póvoa de Varzim’s tradition, the heir of the family is the younger son, to the other children were given the sigla with a trace (the pique). Thus, the older son would have one pique, the second two and so on, until the younger son that would have the original sigla, inheriting the same symbol as his father.

Analyses were made to demonstrate if families actually used the same symbols through generations due to some supposed inconsistencies in some families. It became known that the inconsistencies had historical or genealogical motivations and were demonstrated that these symbols were inherited through generations and preserved as part of Póvoa's local traditions. Hundreds of different marks were studied, which lead to 84 different original families.

representation of Siglas Poveiras in an Azulejo.

See also

• Runic alphabet

External links

• Families (part one)
• Families (part two)