Editor's Note: This article was provided by our partner, ScienceNordic. The original is here. Why did Vikings sometimes use codes when they wrote in runes? Were the messages secret, or did they have ...

We all know which star sign we were born under. With its 12 signs of the zodiac, conventional astrology has long dominated our reading of the heavens above. But what if other cultures had different ...

"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 ...

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 ...

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.

A stone carved with symbols known as runes and dating to the Middle Ages has been discovered during an excavation ahead of a railway-construction project in Oslo, Norway. Runic writing was used in ...

When Lene Brandt and her husband, Anders Nielsen, were preparing to tear up the linoleum floors in the kitchen in their home in the village of Mosekær, in Denmark, they probably expected the normal ...

More than 1,000 years ago, carvers in what is now Denmark set their chisels to rock to etch runestones — monuments to Viking leaders naming their deeds and achievements. Two groups of runestones ...