Hidden patterns of the runestones
What we see when all of Sweden's Viking-age runestones are read at once – what it may mean, and how it can be tested. The figures come from Vitki's open analyses and are explained in the text.
21 October 2026 · Viktor Kvant
What the High One Says a Thousand Years Later
Hávamál was composed about a thousand years ago and reached us in a single manuscript. We first measured how the voice sounds – without God, with an I that remembers – and then read the poem as it asks to be read: as…
Read the article →26 October 2026 · Viktor Kvant
Gentle in speech and free with food
What did the people of the Viking Age want to be remembered for? We read every Viking-age runestone and the whole of Hávamál and counted what is praised. The warrior is there, but as a minor figure.
Read the article →25 October 2026 · Viktor Kvant
Interpret, he who can II – what stood in the gap?
Where a rune is missing, the editors put a dash, and where they do not dare to interpret the word, they write three dots.
Read the article →23 October 2026 · Viktor Kvant
Why Stone?
Runes were cut into wood, bone and metal as readily as into stone, but it is the stone that has survived. Did those who cut them know it would? Thirty-two Viking-age stones say so themselves.
Read the article →22 October 2026 · Viktor Kvant
At Home Between the Realms – the Runestones of Skåne
I grew up in Skåne and feel neither Danish nor at home in Stockholm. So I put the question to the people who lived here a thousand years ago: where did one belong when the stones were raised?
Read the article →21 October 2026 · Viktor Kvant
Five Runestones Looking for Their Carver
Two of three Swedish runestones have no carver in Rundata. Vitki goes through them all and says where the evidence points – and in a blind test on 769 stones, with the answer hidden, the new suggestions were right four…
Read the article →19 October 2026 · Viktor Kvant
Stones and staves – six meanings of a runic word
The word stave turns up wherever runes are discussed: in runologists' descriptions, in the Edda, on the runestones and on old calendars. It means at least six different things.
Read the article →18 October 2026 · Viktor Kvant
Raise It Yourself – or Have It Raised
We counted the most common words on Sweden's Viking-age runestones, province by province and decade by decade.
Read the article →18 October 2026 · Viktor Kvant
The missing runes – work in progress on Vitki's probability model
Many runestones have places where runes have been lost. We are building a model that proposes what stood there and says how sure it is.
Read the article →17 October 2026 · Viktor Kvant
The style groups' dark number
Runestones are dated by their ornament, yet more than a third of all runestones lack a style group in the Scandinavian Runic-text Database – and the loss is not random.
Read the article →17 October 2026 · Viktor Kvant
Interpret, he who can – cryptology as a method for the unread runic inscriptions
In 112 Viking-age runic inscriptions the editors have not been able to interpret more than a single word. We tested them with the codebreakers' classic tools, al-Kindi's frequency analysis and William Friedman's index…
Read the article →16 October 2026 · Viktor Kvant
The exception at Randers – where the Danes prayed on their stones
Denmark had been Christian since Harald Bluetooth, yet the Danish runestones almost never prayed for the dead. Two of the five that do before 1050 stand six kilometres apart near Randers.
Read the article →16 October 2026 · Viktor Kvant
Whoever breaks this stone – a thousand years of runic magic
Curses, Thor and lead amulets against fever: we have searched all 6,753 runic inscriptions in Rundata for traces of magic. It follows the objects through time, from gold around the neck to the stone and back to the body.
Read the article →15 October 2026 · Viktor Kvant
The raven called Memory
A more personal article: about a book in the magazine rack of my parents' home, about the raven above the treetops and why Vitki came about – and about three stanzas of Hávamál that say something about what we can…
Read the article →14 October 2026 · Viktor Kvant
The Malt stone – calculated instead of interpreted
Seven scholars have given the Malt stone seven different meanings. We let probability theory read it instead: a model that has learned the runic language from thousands of other inscriptions and has been tested on 808…
Read the article →14 October 2026 · Viktor Kvant
The daughters the runestones forgot
Only 14 Swedish runestones were raised in memory of a daughter, against 268 for a son, and among the siblings who raise the stone for their father only one in twelve is a daughter.
Read the article →13 October 2026 · Viktor Kvant
She inherited from her child – the women on the runestones
Women are among those who raised one runestone in four where it can be read who raised it, but only one stone in thirty that states the relationship was raised in memory of a woman.
Read the article →13 October 2026 · Viktor Kvant
Erik wrote r – and the district followed
Around Enköping, words such as æftiᛦ are written with an ordinary r instead of the old yr-rune ᛦ five times as often as in the rest of the country. Was it the local pronunciation?
Read the article →13 October 2026 · Viktor Kvant
Thor answered the cross – and fell silent
Only six of 2,321 Swedish runestones name Thor or bear his hammer. They were carved while the cross was spreading, among Christian stones, and several imitate the form of the cross.
Read the article →12 October 2026 · Viktor Kvant
The carver had the last word
Around 1035 more than one runestone in four ended with a prayer to God. Fifty years later more of them ended with the carver's own name.
Read the article →12 October 2026 · Viktor Kvant
The prayer fell silent – but the cross remained
Around the year 1035 more than one runestone in three asked God to help the soul of the dead. Fifty years later only one in ten did, although the cross remained on the stones.
Read the article →October 2026 · Viktor Kvant
The Geats wrote like the Danes – at the border the stones fell silent
The custom of raising runestones came from the Danish realm and took root first in Götaland, and Västergötland wrote the most Danish way.
Read the article →
What would you like to read more about?
Choose up to 3 topics, or write your own suggestion.