An archaeologist from the History and Archeology Museum in Odense, Denmark's third largest city, has discovered what is believed to be the oldest runic inscription in the country's history. Runes are the characters used for writing by various Germanic populations in Northern Europe, such as the Angles, the Goths and the Norsemen. This inscription was found on an eight-centimeter long iron knife that is almost two thousand years old.
In a statement quoted by Danish newspaper Politics, the Odense Museum called it “an absolutely unique find of national importance.”
The pocket knife was discovered by museum curator Jakob Bonde among the remains of a burial urn in a small cemetery east of Odense in the eastern part of the island of Funen in southern Denmark. At first Bonde thought it was just another knife since the runes weren't visible. He only noticed after cleaning that there was writing in it, he told the Guardian.
Runes are made up of segments because they were typically engraved on hard surfaces such as stone and wood, but also on weapons, artifacts and various tools such as knives. The inscription on the knife consists of five runes, which, according to archaeologists' interpretation, form the word “hirila”, which could mean “little sword” in Old Norse.
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It cannot be determined with certainty whether this writing was about the knife itself or its owner, who, according to experts, must have been a rich person anyway. Speaking to the Guardian, Bonde explained that the object comes from a time when the Danish population had ties to the Romans and people of high social status “tried to appear Roman in a way by importing objects from Rome. “try to adopt Roman attitudes. In short, everything Roman said was “very fashionable,” Bonde said.
Lisbeth Imer, rune expert at the National Museum of Denmark, added an additional element. Runes were used by the Germanic population from at least the second century AD until the Middle Ages, when they were gradually replaced by the Latin alphabet. However, about two thousand years ago there were not many people who could read and write, so the ability to do so must have been associated with a certain status and power. “In the early days of runic history, those who could write belonged to a small intellectual elite, and the first traces of such people can be found on the island of Funen,” says Imer.
According to the Odense Museum, the discovery of the knife, which will be on display in the city's Cultural History Museum from February 2, will allow us to add another piece to the knowledge of runic writing in Northern Europe. The oldest runic inscription ever discovered was that of the so-called Vimose comb from 160 AD, which was found in a Danish swamp in 1865. Rather, the knife is 800 years older than the Jelling runestones, which were found in the Jutland region of Denmark, date back to the tenth century AD and are considered the “birth certificate of the country” because, among other things, they contain the name of Denmark .
The world's oldest runestone was found in Norway in autumn 2021 during excavations of a burial site discovered during the construction of a railway line near Lake Tyrifjorden, west of the capital Oslo. Its inscriptions also date from around two thousand years ago.
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