Jeramy Dodds Discovers & Re-Creates Ancient 'Font Therapy' From Northern Finland

Wow: At the Puritan's Town Crier blog, Montreal-based poet and translator Jeramy Dodds exhibits his re-creation of an ancient Finnish font, a discovery that Dodds calls "font therapy" and "whisper writing," made after a decade of research in Northern Finland. "Font therapy was used in ancient scriptoriums to treat severe malaise," he writes. An excerpt from the text-portion of this visual essay (but of course, for the visuals, head to the source):

Even though communication of any kind was strictly forbidden in many scriptoriums, some scribes invented faintly-inked, coded fonts which were passed around on scraps of vellum. It often took newly anointed scribes years to talk to anyone or to figure out what was happening. X-ray diagnostics of marginalia in a number of ancient texts have revealed important examples of therapeutic, coded font, however, without a conversion key, many of these fonts have remained indecipherable. No conversion keys were ever put to print; rather, scribes mentally created their own keys. These keys were often so distant from that of the original meaning that communication lapsed. However, these placebo conversations were enough to dramatically lower the boredom that plagued scriptoriums.

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One example of font therapy, or what Mervyn Peake has called “whisper writing,” has been recreated here. It was pieced together from sherds of vellum found in an ancient and extremely nasty midden pile in Northern Finland, a place of great beauty. Part of what makes this font, known as MP10x-SUOMI-T2, so incredible, is its simplicity...