OSLO, NORWAY—According to an announcement launched by the University of Oslo, researcher Johan Bollaert has studied Norway’s medieval inscriptions, a few of which had been written with letters of the Roman alphabet, and a few of which had been written with runes. He famous that carving phrases into wooden, stone, or metallic takes effort and time, and so inscriptions are subsequently shorter and less complicated types of textual content, and are normally present in locations the place the context would have been understood, similar to on gravestones. The evaluation confirmed that inscriptions written with letters and with runes each featured punctuation, a fastidiously deliberate format, and ornamentation, though letters, which had been launched to Norway with Christianity, had been extra usually utilized in inscriptions in cities and episcopal seats the place bishops resided. These texts had been additionally extra standardized and will have been produced in workshops affiliated with the church. In distinction, numerous variation was discovered amongst runic inscriptions, which had been extra prone to be positioned in smaller settlements. Gravestones inscribed with letters usually had a picture of the deceased, whereas gravestones with runic inscriptions didn’t, suggesting {that a} excessive charge of runic literacy was anticipated, Bollaert concluded. To examine a stone unearthed in Sweden with the longest present runic inscription, go to “The Emperor of Stones.”
