World’s oldest rune stone has more pieces that contain mysterious messages, researchers say

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The world’s oldest dated rune stone, a landmark discovery revealed in 2023, is just one piece of a larger, nearly 2,000-year-old slab, new research has found. Now, scientists in Norway are working to reassemble the ancient puzzle, a process that’s starting to shed light on who carved the mysterious runic writing and what the words mean.

Runes were the building blocks of the first Germanic writing within the first few centuries AD and remained in use in Scandinavia until the late Middle Ages, according to the University of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History. It’s believed Germanic people drew inspiration from the Roman alphabet to create the characters, according to the museum, but the exact origins of runes and how they were used has remained murky.

Numerous stones carved with runes found across Scandinavia bear fascinating messages, such as one about a powerful Viking queen or a warning for frigid climate change based on past events. But many of these stones are from the age of the Vikings, about AD 800 to 1050, and few examples of early runes exist.

Archaeologists who originally unearthed the oldest known rune stone in 2021 while investigating an ancient grave site in eastern Norway found the large piece covered with traces of runes. But as the fieldwork continued, the researchers uncovered additional sandstone fragments, some bearing similar runic inscriptions, in other nearby graves.

The broken pieces appeared to fit together, with some of the runic script from one stone continuing onto another, and the scientists realized the fragments were all once part of a single stone. The research team published the new findings in the February 3 issue of the journal Antiquity.

It appears the stone was intentionally fragmented, based on the way it was broken, and individual pieces were placed in different burials that occurred later. Over time, rune stones have been used as memorials or to mark events. The use of this particular rune stone ritually changed over time, the latest findings suggested.

The stone pieces — including the original 2021 discovery — ended up buried alongside cremated human remains, which has allowed researchers to confirm that the rune stone fragments are the oldest ever to be documented. Radiocarbon dating suggested the fragments date back to between 50 BC and AD 275.

“Due to the rarity of rune-stones found in clearly datable archaeological contexts, we have had little concrete evidence regarding the early use of runic writing on stone and the age of the earliest rune-stones,” said study coauthor Dr. Kristel Zilmer, professor of runology at the University of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History, in an email. “The inscribed fragments … provide such a rare exception, and additionally, they feature a remarkable mixture of multiple inscriptions and other markings — unlike anything previously seen on rune-inscribed stones.”

But the fragments pose new mysteries as well, including riddles contained in the enigmatic runic markings, which are proving difficult to translate, as well as surprising clues as to the identities of the carvers themselves. And the findings may help researchers to better understand how rune stones were repurposed over time.

Decoding runes

Archaeologists have found runic inscriptions on various objects, including a bone comb and an iron knife, in addition to rune stones, which had various uses. In any case, translating the runes is difficult because the Germanic languages they represented varied over time.

“Rune-stones likely had both ceremonial and practical intentions,” Zilmer said. “The grave field and the original (single) raised stone suggest a commemorative and dedicatory intent, while subsequent use in a separate burial illuminates later pragmatic and symbolic expressions.”

The research team initially began investigating the Svingerud grave field — a source of multiple past archaeological finds — in Norway’s Hole municipality (25 miles, or 40 kilometers, northwest of Oslo) as part of “rescue excavations” that took place ahead of the construction of a new highway and railroad, said lead study author Dr. Steinar Solheim, associate professor of archaeology at the University of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History.

The inscriptions on the stones recovered from the Hole site are particularly intriguing because they appear to reflect multiple acts of inscribing, “showing a fascinating mix of intentional, comprehensible writing, attempts at writing and script-like or ornamental motifs,” Zilmer said.

The unknown markings may represent early variants of runes, but it’s difficult for the researchers to tell when the different inscriptions were made.

One sequence on the Svingerud stone, now known as the Hole 2 stone, in particular stands out: the single word, or name, of Idiberug. The researchers can’t trace an exact meaning, so they believe it was the name of a person, perhaps a woman.

The clearest inscription is on the Hole 3 stone, and appears to be the rune inscriber’s signature.

“The text begins with the word ‘I’, followed by the name of the inscriber, then a verb indicating the activity (‘wrote’) and finally the word ‘rune’, which refers to the inscription as a whole,” Zilmer said.

“The name of the rune-carver is challenging to detect due to faint, ambiguously shaped runes and weathered surface areas,” Zilmer added. “We have proposed a few possible readings. The most intriguing feature is the ending with -u, which suggests that this could have been a woman’s name. If so, this would be the earliest known record of a female rune-inscriber.”

In runic script, the ending -u is feminine. The authors are hesitant to link the potential female inscriber on the Hole 3 stone with the likely female name of Idiberug on the Hole 2 stone at this point in their research.

The team’s work to uncover more about numerous additional small fragments uncovered in 2023 remains ongoing, and the researchers are still trying to determine the best way to put them together.

“The challenge lies in the fact that this is not a complete puzzle — we are missing significant portions, and there are evident gaps,” Zilmer said. “However, we believe it should be possible to determine how many of the smaller fragments could be connected to the larger fragments or to each other.”

Dr. Lisbeth Imer, curator and senior researcher at the National Museum of Denmark, believes the stones will cause researchers to question their understanding of rune stones, which typically served as monuments to commemorate names of people and prevent them from fading with time. Imer was not involved in the new study but specializes in the study of runes.

“But the Svingerud stone challenges this perception, because it was carved with runes, then destroyed, then carved with a new inscription, etc.,” Imer said in an email. “So perhaps, we should not view it as a rune stone but as something completely different. There are still mysteries to be solved here.”

Uncovering ancient stones

Three grave mounds were known at the Svingerud site from previous research, but the archaeologists found cremations within a fourth mound and two flat graves during the new excavations.

The team began by excavating cremation pits, or simple graves with little or no visible markers above ground, that were common from the late Bronze Age (1750 to 500 BC) to the Roman Iron Age (AD 1 to 400). The crew uncovered the cremated bones of an adult, charcoal and other grave goods, as well as a reddish-brown stone slab bearing runic writing, all tucked beneath a younger grave mound.

The team also uncovered pottery, brooches, belts, needles and bone comb fragments, and beginning in 2022, they continued to spot sandstone fragments bearing traces of inscriptions. One, named Hole 3, had identifiable runes and lines running across it. The runes provided the start and end of inscriptions on two larger fragments found nearby.

The largest fragment the team discovered, called Hole 1, was found vertically placed in a grave and doesn’t show any signs of runic inscription, leading researchers to believe it was once the base of an upright standing stone.

While studying Hole 2 and Hole 3 in March 2023, “it quickly became evident that they fit together,” suggesting the stone was initially intended to mark one grave before it was broken apart to commemorate later burials, Zilmer said. It’s also possible the separate graves are connected in some way that remains unknown, according to the research.

Imer believes the stone pieces are an extremely interesting find because they were located in a grave field with the opportunity to conduct radiocarbon dating.

In a January 2011 study, Imer suggested the earliest rune stones could be from the Late Roman Period, between AD 160 and 375, “because of stylistic evidence regarding the shape of the runes and the linguistics, and that the earliest rune stones were probably erected in Norway,” she said.

“I am very happy to see that the Norwegian scholars are now able to confirm that chronology,” Imer said. “The carbon-14 dating that they have succeeded with regarding the Svingerud stone lies between 50 BC and 275 AD, which covers a rather broad range of time, but it fits quite neatly with the earliest inscriptions that we know from other types of material and objects: brooches, weapon and other personal equipment.”

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