Runes are the characters of the alphabet used by the Vikings and other Germanic peoples from about the second to the 15th centuries A.D. Some runes vaguely resemble letters in our own alphabet; others ...

Historians have long thought that Slavic peoples did not develop an alphabet until the ninth century—but the new findings suggest otherwise. Masaryk University A Czech graduate student has discovered ...

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 ...

OSLO, NORWAY—According to a statement released by the University of Oslo, researcher Johan Bollaert has studied Norway’s medieval inscriptions, some of which were written with letters of the Roman ...

Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. Two rare artifacts inscribed with ancient letters, or runes, could be the key to a mysterious era of Viking history when ...

The Vikings are often portrayed as illiterate, uncultured barbarians who evinced more interest in plunder than in poetry. In fact, the Vikings left behind a great number of documents in stone, wood ...