Within the autumn of 2021, archaeologists of the Museum of Cultural Historical past investigated a grave discipline by Tyrifjorden in Ringerike. In one of many graves, they found a stone with a number of runic inscriptions. Burnt bones and charcoal from the grave reveal that the runes have been inscribed between the years 1 and 250 AD. This makes it the earliest recognized rune stone.

This historic Norwegian rune stone is attracting worldwide consideration amongst runic students and archaeologists. The inscriptions are as much as 2,000 years previous and date again to the earliest days of the enigmatic historical past of runic writing. The stone has been named after the place of discovery, and is now known as the Svingerud stone.

Someday between 1,800 and a pair of,000 years in the past, somebody stood close to Tyrifjorden and carved runes into the 31×32 cm block of reddish-brown Ringerike sandstone. They spoke an early type of the traditional Nordic language that’s the ancestor language of contemporary Nordic languages spoken in Scandinavia immediately.

A girl known as Idibera?

Is the identify inscribed on the stone that of the one who is buried there? On the entrance face of the stone, eight runes stand out clearly amongst different inscriptions. Transformed into Latin letters they spell: idiberug. Is the stone made “for Idibera”? Or was the intention to jot down the identify ‘Idibergu’ or the kin identify ‘Idiberung’?

The methods of writing older rune inscriptions various loads, and the language has modified significantly from the time these runes have been carved till the Viking Age and the Center Ages. Deciphering the messages on the stone is due to this fact a problem.

Playful writing?

The stone has a number of kinds of inscriptions. Some strains type a grid sample, there are small zigzag figures and different attention-grabbing markings. Not all make linguistic sense, and one can get the impression that somebody has imitated, explored or performed with writing. Maybe the carver have been within the technique of studying easy methods to carve runes.

There’s nonetheless quite a lot of analysis to be executed on the Svingerud stone, however no doubt, students will get hold of useful data concerning the early historical past of runic writing and the customized of creating rune stones.

An alphabet of its personal

Runes are the oldest recognized type of writing in Norway. We all know that runes have been in steady use from across the starting of Widespread Period and all through the Viking Age and the Center Ages.The runic alphabet is named the futhark, as a result of the primary six runes are “f u th a r ok”. On the Svingerud stone we additionally discover an inscription with the primary three runes of the alphabet ᚠ (f), ᚢ (u) and ᚦ (th).

Runes are written indicators that symbolize totally different sounds. Some appear to be Latin capital letters, reminiscent of ᛒ (B). Some runes resemble Latin letters, however stand for a special sound: ᛖ = e. Others don’t resemble characters we use immediately: ᛈ denotes p. The runic script could also be impressed by the Latin alphabet, however its precise origin is unsure. Those that invented the script gave the runes their very own twist and altered the order of the characters.

The Museum of Cultural Historical past has carried out the archaeological excavation of the burial discipline in Gap as a part of Nye Veier AS’s deliberate growth of street and railway (Ringeriksporteføljen) between Sandvika and Hønefoss.

The runestone will go on show on the Museum of Cultural Historical past in Oslo from January 21 to February 26.

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