viking necklacesWhile excavating a cremation site in eastern Norway, archaeologists uncovered a red sandstone rock with a unique inscription. Ongoing research at the Svingerud site has revealed that the objects used to bury this runestone date from the 1st century AD.
This means that this rune stone (now called the Svingerud Stone) and its inscription could date from AD 1 – the time of Christ and Emperor Augustus, a time when Roman literacy was hundreds of miles from Scandinavia was.
This is great news because:
1) it shows that runes were used in Scandinavia centuries earlier than we thought, and
2) the influence (or origin) of other cultures through writing on the development of runes to be minor could....or at least it turned out to be different than what scientists previously thought.
Inscription
Of the thousands of rune stones found in Scandinavia, the Svingerud stone is the only one known to date from before 300 AD. In fact, only about 30 stones date to before 550. This stone (which is about a foot to a foot) contains a single, rather crudely carved runic inscription, as well as markings that may be lost runes, ornate runes, or simply rune patterns.The presence of unknown characters alongside the well-known Elder Futhark runes (the accepted ancient runic alphabet) shows once again that the development of runes was a process and not as standardized as it sometimes seems.
The inscription on the Svingerud Stone seems to contain the word "Ideberug". The currently best possible hypothesis of the experts at the Oslo Museum is that the term could refer to the female first name Idebera, which was common in Scandinavia at the time. Thus Ideberug can mean "in Idebera"; or possibly "[descendants or fortune] of Ideber". Of course, carving names or titles in runes on stone later became a common practice in the Norse and Germanic cultures.
However, there are other possible interpretations. The above interpretation assumes that the runes should act together as one word, not as a mnemonic or code for several different words. It should also ignore the presence of uncertain characters, which may or may not have special meaning for the inscription.
Discovery of runes in Viking lore
The Vikings (referring to the Norse who arrived long after this runestone) believed that humans never invented runes. Instead, the runes were discovered by the god Odin.As such, they were not just letters, but part of profound cosmic principles. Odin received the runes after much suffering. Odin pierced his divine heart with a spear and hanged himself from the branches of Yggdrasil, the world tree, for nine nights. Only then were the runes revealed to him. As we read in the Eddic poem Havamal (Words of the Most High):
I ween that I hung on the windy tree,
Hung there for nights full nine;
With the spear I was wounded, and offered I was
To Odin, myself to myself,
On the tree that none may ever know
What root beneath it runs.