PA ImagesIf you thought Egyptian hieroglyphs were confusing, wait until you see this Viking code, which took 1,200 years to crack and apparently warns us about global warming.
The secret code is inscribed into slabs of granite dating back hundreds of years, and it’s believed the coding predicts climate change and prophesied the end of the world, as it describes a ‘battle with the weather’.
The granite is located in Sweden and is thought to date back to 800 CE, as it references emperor Theodoric the Great who was king of the Ostrogoths, and ruler of the independent Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy between 493–526.
PA ImagesWhile the lines ingrained in the rock may seem like simple scribbles to us, a team of researchers – led by Professor Per Holmberg at the University of Gothenburg – have been attempting to crack the ancient code.
In a journal published by Uppsala University, the team explain how they managed to decipher the message.
The report, titled The Rök Runestone and the End of the World, reads:
Combining perspectives and findings from semiotics, philology, archaeology, and history of religion, the study presents a completely new interpretation which follows a unified theme, showing how the monument can be understood in the socio-cultural and religious context of early Viking Age Scandinavia. The inscription consists, according to the proposed interpretation, of nine enigmatic questions.
According to the researchers, Theodoric’s reign was seen as a bad omen as, after his death, a number of volcanic eruptions left swathes of Europe in darkness, while disease and famine spread through the region, as well as crops failing.
PA ImagesThe study suggests the inscription deals with an anxiety triggered by Varin’s son being struck down in battle as, before this, a solar storm turned the sky red. While in the same period, a solar eclipse made the sun disappear, and patch of particularly cold weather saw crops fail. That year, 50% of the population in Scandinavia either fled the region in search of food, or succumbed to starvation.
As well as this, the group of researchers found it spoke of concerns for ‘all four suns’, and asked about issues relating to the Nordic god Odin (the god of wisdom, poetry, death, divination, and magic).
As reported by The Sun, part of the code translates as the following:
After Vamoth stand these runes. And Varin, the father, made them after the death-doomed son.
Let us say this as a memory for Odin, which spoils of war there were two, which twelve times were taken as spoils of war, both from one to another?
This is apparently in reference to the sun and moon’s ‘monthly battle over lunar light’, and talks of a wolf killing the sun.
University of GothenburgThe rest of the coding includes a lot more about wolves, killing wolves, killing the sun, battlefields, and other such divine images that are evidently very important to Vikings and Viking Gods.
However, I think if I’m wanting to read up on climate change warnings, I’ll probably read something more recently published, and that doesn’t talk about wolves so much.
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Niamh Shackleton is a pint sized person and journalist at UNILAD. After studying Multimedia Journalism at the University of Salford, she did a year at Caters News Agency as a features writer in Birmingham before deciding that Manchester is (arguably) one of the best places in the world, and therefore moved back up north. She’s also UNILAD’s unofficial crazy animal lady.