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 ...

A 900 year-old runic code used by ancient Vikings has been cracked for the first time, revealing a simple message:‘Kiss me!’. K Jonas Nordby, a runeologist from the University of Oslo, was able to ...

From ancient times mankind was appealed by unknown writings: half-forgotten antique languages, Egypt hieroglyphs, Indian inscriptions… The fate of runes was much happy – their sense wasn’t lost in the ...

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 ...

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 ...

Both the Celtic Ogham and the Germanic Futhark have unique sequences for which no interpretation has yet been found. The composition of the Ogham and the Futhark is mostly explained by complicated ...