In the 1800’s, the Rök runestone was discovered built into the wall of a Church in Rök, Sweden. The runestone represents pieces of Scandinavian culture before significant contact with Christanity occured. It is the one of the earliest made runestones ever discovered, and it is also has the longest runic inscription ever found. It was likely carved in the early 9th century, and viewed from that time up until around the 12th century, when it was built into the Church. Reusing runestones as building material was common at this time¹.

The Rök runestone has a unique Swedish-Norwegian alphabet made up of 16 characters, known as the younger futhark, but it also contains 9 lines in the alphabet known as the older futhark, which has fewer letters. The runestone contains secret formulas, epic verses, tidbits about characters from heroic myth, and an epithet memorializing Vémóðr, son of Varinn². Some of the text is even written in cipher. Using runestones to memorialize family was quite common, and likely one of the primary reasons the stone was erected. But the runestone was also erected to preserve important knowledge, and these pieces of information were likely very important to the culture of Norse Scandinavia, as it would have been time consuming to carve out all of the runes. The various religious and cultural beliefs of this time contrast greatly with later Christian practices. For example, burials eventually change radically from cremation with grave goods to inhumation in Christian cemeteries.  The social structure of society also greatly changed in response to growing bureaucracy and consolidation of power.