This runestone shatters what we thought we knew about Viking

This runestone shatters what we thought we knew about Viking ancestors The

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SCIENCE – “It’s a unique discovery,” says rudologist Kristel Zilmer. Norwegian archaeologists believe they have found the world’s oldest rune stone, engraved nearly 2,000 years ago, several centuries before those already known, they announced on Tuesday January 17, 2023.

As you can see in the video at the top of the article, the block of brown sandstone has a side length of about thirty centimeters. He was discovered in a burial ground excavated near Lake Tyrifjorden, northwest of Oslo, during work to build a railway line in autumn 2021. Dating of bones and charred wood found in a tomb next to the stone suggests it was carved between AD 1 and 250, the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo said. It was “a runologist’s dream,” the museum estimated.

Normally erected on graves, particularly during the Viking Age, these stones are engraved with inscriptions in runic letters, the oldest known alphabet in Scandinavia. “The first in Norway and Sweden are estimated to have appeared in the 300s or 400s, but it turns out that some rune stones are older than previously thought,” commented Kristel Zilmer of the Norwegian agency NTB.

The runes used by several so-called pre-Germanic peoples have an origin that is still largely mysterious. Once translated into the Latin alphabet, the inscription found on the Tyrifjorden stone – which may be contemporaneous with Jesus Christ – forms the word ‘idiberug’, perhaps in homage to the person lying in the tomb.

The stone will now be on display at the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo from January 21 to February 26.

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