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Step North Chagrin Falls
extraordinary carpet dodger
extraordinary carpet dodger
2026 digital giclée aluminum print
36" x 36"
aluminum flush mount
1/1
$3,200
I've always been fascinated by language and etymology. I recently discovered the Japanese history of adopting foreign words, "gairaigo", which means "loanword" in Japanese. It specifically refers to foreign words—mostly from English, Portuguese, Dutch, German, and French—adopted into the language and written in katakana. I thought it would be fun, and whimsical, to develop a series of randomly posed anime-like characters with humorous allusions to gairaigo words.
This is frisbee viking (furisubī vaikingu), or, フリスビー・ヴァイキング, in katakana. Quirkily, vaikingu, or more accurately, "baikingu", refers in Japanese to a buffet or smorgasbord, which was adopted from a movie about Vikings by a hotel in Tokyo to represent a Swedish styled buffet. In the context I've used here, it would be understood to mean "Norse warrior".
Faux musical notes and ASCII/Unicode art surround the figure (corn on a stick, hot dogs, and birds). I've included ancient Norse runes as well that spell out alternately, frisbee, viking, and smorgasbord in the Short-Twig variant of the Younger Futhark alphabet.
Younger Futhark (Short-Twig variant)
Younger Futhark (Short-Twig variant)
The set of letters/characters is referred to as Futhark or Fudark, which is formed from the phonetic sounds of the first six letters, much like the word, "alphabet", originates from the Greek alpha and beta.
ᚠᚢᚦᚭᚱᚴ : fu(th or d)ark
Fehu (ᚠ), Uruz (ᚢ), Thurisaz (ᚦ), Ansuz (ᚭ), Raido (ᚱ), and Kenaz (ᚴ)
The full Younger Futhark character set
The full Younger Futhark character set
ᚠᚢᚦᚭᚱᚴᚽᚿᛁᛆᛌᛐᛓᛙᛚᛧ
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