As one Viking poet put it, "Let no man carve runes to cast a spell, save first he learns to read them well." While many in the upper classes could read and write runes, the Vikings called in a ...

Archaeologists have pieced together the earliest stone fragments containing inscriptions of Germanic letters, revealing what ...

they existed outside of normal Viking society and were considered “other.” The Vikings believed in magic. They believed that their runic alphabet could be used to work magic spells.

Sweden, renowned for its wealth of Viking rune stones and rock carvings, boasts the world’s largest collection of these historic artifacts. These standing stones, dating back to between the 9th ...