From ancient times mankind was appealed by unknown writings: half-forgotten antique languages, Egypt hieroglyphs, Indian inscriptions… The fate of runes was much happy – their sense wasn’t lost in the ...

In the Middle Ages, the Roman alphabet and runes lived side by side. A new doctoral thesis challenges the notion that runes represent more of an oral and less of a learned form of written language.

"Kiss me," reads this message, written in cipher runes on a piece of bone found in Sigtuna. Photo: Jonas Nordby More than 900 years ago, Vikings used coded runes to send frivolous romantic messages to ...

Outraged social media users condemned the Conservative Political Action Conference organizers this weekend for what they speculated was a nod to Nazi pagan ideology and modern white supremacy, drawing ...

Perhaps no one has ever been as excited to see a comb as Danish archaeologist Søren Sindbæk. He and a team of archaeologists from Aarhus University recently unearthed one at a historic Viking town ...

Melissa D'costa finds out more about the stones, which have been carved with an ancient and sacred Germanic alphabet, for divination Melissa D'costa finds out more about the stones, which have been ...

Archaeologists in Norway have uncovered what might be the oldest known rune stone, pushing back the origins of runic writing further than ever imagined. Estimated to date between 50 BCE and 275 CE, ...

Like many important discoveries, it happened by accident. Alena Slamova, a Czech graduate student in archaeology, was routinely washing some animal bones that had been recovered from a dig in an early ...

The people most commonly associated with runes are the Norsemen, and, within that, Vikings. Countless artefacts, from gravestones to vases, have been found with rune carvings on them. People used ...