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 ...

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 ...

Runes scratched onto a decorated comb are the oldest evidence of written West Germanic, the language that gave birth to English, German, Dutch, and a variety of other modern tongues. Discovered ...

Their findings, published in the journal Antiquity on Monday, shed light on the ritual aspects of early Germanic stone writing as well as the evolution of runes, the letters used in Nordic ...

The one thing that has stood the test of time though, is the alphabet that the language is written in. Adopted around the 700s, ... prior to the 700s the language was written using Germanic runes.

Runes are the characters in several Germanic alphabets that were used in northern Europe from ancient times until the adoption of the Latin alphabet.

Archeologists in Norway have discovered the world’s oldest dated runestone, featuring runic inscriptions from up to 2,000 years ago. Researchers at the University of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural ...