Runes carved on stone almost 2000 years ago add up to the word “idiberug”
At the end of 2021, not far from the Norwegian lake Türifjord, archaeologists discovered an ancient burial ground. In addition to the skeletons, an old rune stone was found in it – usually such objects were just installed on the graves of people. After this discovery, scientists lost interest in the stone with ancient inscriptions, but recently attention has been paid to it again. For many years, researchers were sure that the very first runestones were made in the 4th century AD, but the analysis showed that the found sample is much older. Not only is it the oldest rune stone known to science, but a mysterious inscription was also found on it. What can she mean? Let’s look into the details.
The oldest stone with runes
The runestone found in a Norwegian burial ground is a piece of brown sandstone, square in shape and about 30 by 30 centimeters in size. As mentioned, earlier scientists were sure that the rune stones were created in the period from the 4th to the 12th century AD. However, the authors of the new study conducted a carbon analysis of bones and wood in the burial ground – it turned out that people were buried between the first year and 250 AD. So, the stone with runes has an age of about 2000 years. It is the oldest rune stone ever found by archaeologists.
Representatives of the Oslo Museum announced that the discovery of a runic record from the beginning of our era is a “dream of runologists.”
We thought that the first runestones in Norway and Sweden appeared in 300 or 400 years, but it turned out that some of them may be older than we previously thought, said runologist Kristel Zilmer.
In addition to age, the ancient rune has another feature – it has a mysterious inscription. After being translated into Latin, it looks like “idiberug” and scientists have no idea what it stands for. At the moment, the most likely version says that Idiberug is the name of a person buried in a grave.
An archaeologist examines a piece of sandstone believed to be the oldest runestone in the world.
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Berezan Rune Stone
At the moment, this is the only runestone of such ancient times. Over the years, archaeologists have found thousands of such artifacts, but most of them were left by the Vikings, who lived in the 9th-11th centuries AD. Most often, stones with carved runes are found on the territory of Scandinavia – in the places where the Vikings lived. But also such artifacts are sometimes found in countries that were raided by Scandinavian warriors.
For example, in 1905, a rune stone was found on the island of Berezan, which is located in the Black Sea. The Berezan runic stone was located at the head of the buried man. The inscription on the object was deciphered and reads as follows:
“Gran made this burial (hvalf) in memory of Karl, his brother”
Berezan Rune Stone
Scientists believe that a Scandinavian named Gran and the deceased Viking were from the island of Gotland. How they ended up on another piece of land, why one of them died and how the fate of Gran, no one knows.
Корабль викингов пролежал под землей 1 000 лет. Теперь его хотят достать.
Runic symbols – what is their peculiarity
Looking at the rune stones, you may have noticed that the letters on them have a straight outline. This is the main feature of all runes – the letters used in ancient Scandinavia, as well as those of the Turks, Hungarians, Bulgars and a number of other peoples. Their shape is due to the fact that the inscriptions were usually carved on stones, wood, bones and metal. They were very difficult to carve, so people kept squiggles and other complex shapes to a minimum.
Futhark runic alphabet
In total, scientists have found about 5,000 runic records – most of them were discovered in Sweden. We told about one of these finds in 2021. Not far from the Czech village of Lany, aspiring archaeologist Alena Slamova dug up a cow bone with strange symbols. Her senior colleagues determined that the inscription was made using the Futhark runic alphabet. But there was no meaning in this inscription – the last few letters of the alphabet were scratched on the bones.
Ancient runes on a cow bone
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The researchers suggested that the letters were inscribed for educational purposes. The bone lay on Slavic soil, and the inscriptions were made 1400 years ago – two centuries before the appearance of Slavic writing. Most likely, someone visited the Scandinavian lands and decided to transfer knowledge to another place by scratching the alphabet on cow bones. But there is another version of the origin of the inscription – you can read more about it in the article about the scientific discovery.
