Page 419 - J. C. Turner - History and Science of Knots

The True Love Knot 413

Quasi ut wald knut eller valkad knut, Hdrdknut, nodus gordius,
nodus adamantinus, inexplicabilis lagneus.
Angl: Wale-knot, adamantine ties.
Germ: Zweifels Knoten.

Fig. 9. Knot on a New Year's letter (1820)
Ihres, in his Glossarium sviogothicum 1769 has under Walknut the fol-
lowing, translated from [36]:

Walknut, hercules knot, consists of many intertwining bights; called
valknut from vel which in Icelandic means cunning, superstition.
The English call this knot the truelover knot, which has lead Hicke
to conjecture that many of the knot decorations, which are chiseled
onto our runestones can be considered symbols of the living's love
and respect for the deceased.
From these notes Ohrvall concluded that the Turk's Head Knot could
have been used as the ancient Betrothal Knot. He based this on the fact that,
to him, Valknut was a Turk's Head, yet the meticulous Vilhelm Linders in
1896 also spoke of a Valknut , but to him the word quite obviously meant
a Carrick Bend [24]. Linder's Turk's Head is called Valknop . Ohrvall was
aware of this discrepancy. Furthermore he also knew about John O'Gilvie's
Imperial Dictionary (1833) in which is found an illustration of the Carrick
Bend among the entries on the True Love Knot. In the English knotting
literature the Carrick Bend structure has also been named True Love Knot
[1, #24261. To Ohrvall it seemed plausible that the Hercules Knot, which