Coded rune is 900-year-old Viking Valentine
More than 900 years ago, Vikings used coded runes to send frivolous romantic messages to each other, a researcher at the University of Oslo has discovered, with one message, written on a piece of bone in Sweden, simply saying, "Kiss me".
Jonas Nordby,a PhD candidate at the University of Oslo, has studied more than 80 coded runic inscriptions, along the way cracking the Jötunvillur Code, a secret rune alphabet which had confounded rune experts for decades.
"Many believe the Vikings used cryptography to hide secret messages. But I think the codes were used to joke around and to learn runes, rather than to communicate," Nordby told Forskning, a Norwegian science website. "We have little reason to believe that rune codes were used to hide sensitive messages. People often wrote short, everyday messages."
The "Kiss me" rune, found in Sigtuna, Sweden, is written in cipher runes, which runologists have long been able to read. But nine of the 80 messages Nordby studied were written in the previously impenetrable Jötunvillur Code.
http://www.thelocal.no/20140213/vikings-used-runes-for-love-messages-norway-researcher
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During the 1861 excavation, Maeshowe’s entrance passage was inaccessible, so an access shaft was driven down through the top of the mound. Once inside, however, the archaeologists discovered that they were not the first to break into the tomb.
Runic "graffiti" found on the inner walls confirmed the Orkneyinga Saga account that several groups of Norsemen had entered the tomb - known to them as "Orkahaugr" - in the middle of the 12th century and recorded their presence on the ancient stone.
http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/maeshowe/index.html
"Ingebjork the fair widow - many a woman has walked stooping in here a very showy person" signed by "Erlingr"
"Thorni f*cked. Helgi carved" (the official guidebooks usually tone this inscription down)
"Ingigerth is the most beautiful of all women" (carved beside a rough drawing of a slavering dog)
"This mound was raised before Ragnarr Lothbrocks her sons were brave smooth-hide men though they were"
http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/maeshowe/maeshrunes.htm
