Norwegian archaeologists imagine they’ve discovered the world’s oldest runestone inscribed virtually 2,000 years in the past, making it a number of hundred centuries older than earlier discoveries, they introduced on Tuesday.
The sq. brown sandstone rock, measuring about 30 by 30 centimeters (12 by 12 inches), was discovered in the course of the excavation of an historic burial floor in late 2021, at Tyrifjorden northwest of Oslo, forward of building on a railway line.
Carbon relationship of bones and wooden present in a grave beside the rune recommend that it was inscribed someday between 12 months one and 250 CE, Oslo’s Museum of Cultural Historical past mentioned.
Usually erected at gravesites, particularly in the course of the Viking period, runes are stones inscribed with runic letters, the oldest alphabet identified in Scandinavia.
The invention, which may date from the time of Jesus Christ, is “a dream for runologists”, who research historic runic alphabets, inscriptions and their historical past, the museum in Oslo mentioned.
“We thought that the primary ones in Norway and Sweden appeared within the years 300 or 400, nevertheless it seems that some runestones may very well be even older than we beforehand believed”, runologist Kristel Zilmer informed Norwegian information company NTB.
“It is a distinctive discovery”, she mentioned.
The origin of runestones stays largely a thriller.
Re-transcribed into the Latin alphabet, the inscription on the Tyrifjorden rune varieties the unknown phrase “idiberug”, maybe a reference to the individual mendacity within the grave.
The runestone will go on show on the Museum of Cultural Historical past in Oslo from January 21 to February 26.
© Agence France-Presse
