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 ...

The ancient runic alphabet, used by Germanic peoples centuries ago prior to the adoption of the Latin alphabet, remains one of the most enigmatic early writing systems. Chief among its mysteries is ...

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 ...

Archaeologists in Denmark have uncovered two objects with rare Viking runic inscriptions dating to around 800 CE, during excavations in Ribe – the country's oldest town. The new discoveries shed light ...

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.