PRAGUE (AFP) — An inscribed cow bone dating back to the seventh century proves that Germanic runes were the oldest script ever used by the ancient Slavs, Czech scientists said Thursday. Up to now, it ...

Two rare artifacts inscribed with ancient letters, or runes, could be the key to a mysterious era of Viking history when they suddenly abandoned their old alphabet and transitioned to a new one.

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 ...

Editor's Note: This article was originally published at ScienceNordic. In 1944, a conscientious citizen told the National Museum of Denmark that he had found something at an airfield in Værløse. At ...

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 History ...

To understand the Vikings as a 'people' 19th-century historians turned to the written evidence of sagas and chronicles. However, the documents don't tell the whole story, as Gareth Williams explains.

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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 ...