A runestone is a large stone carved with runic inscriptions — usually in the early Germanic alphabet known as the futhark.

The runic alphabet, or Futhark, gets its name from its first six sounds (f, u, th, a, r, k), much like the word 'alphabet' derives from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta.

The ancient runic alphabet, used by Germanic peoples centuries ago prior to the adoption of the Latin alphabet, remains one of the most enigmatic early writing systems. Chief among its mysteries is ...

The inscription measures roughly four by five feet. Within its chiseled border lie 255 runic symbols — characters from ...

Archaeologists remain baffled by a surprising, seemingly ahistorical find located deep in the Canadian wilderness. But after years of research, analysis, and historical corroboration, an ...

In addition to communicating language, some runes also had a mythological connection, being linked with deities in Germanic paganism. The runic alphabet eventually evolved to reflect the transition ...

During the fall of 2021, archaeologists excavating a grave in eastern Norway unearthed a block of red-tinged sandstone etched with spidery runes, an ancient system of writing used by Germanic ...

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 ...

Archaeologists have discovered what may be the world's earliest known rune-stone, a study reports. Runes are the letters of an alphabetic script used to write Germanic languages before the ...

In German, W is simply called veh, and pronounced like an English V. Most European languages that use the Latin source alphabet, Barrett notes, “have the W only because they borrowed English ...