Where is the Rök runestone located today?
The Rök runestone stands beside a church in Ödeshög Municipality, Sweden. It sits within Östergötland near the village now called Rök under a protective roof.
The Rök runestone stands beside a church in Ödeshög Municipality, Sweden. It sits within Östergötland near the village now called Rök under a protective roof.
Varinn carved the stone as a father remembering his dead son named Vámóðr near the early 9th century. The inscription contains around 760 characters written in Old East Norse dialects using short-twig runes alongside special cipher methods known as displacement or Caesar ciphers.
A specific passage describes Þjóðríkr the bold ruling over shores of the Hreiðsea who died in 526 A.D. during the reign of Ostrogothic kings. Historical records indicate this figure likely references a famous statue moved by Charlemagne in 801 A.D. from Ravenna to Aachen.
Twenty kings lie dead there according to one interpretation involving four groups of five brothers. Each group shares identical names while their fathers were also four brothers in a story about Sjólund that resembles Roslagen mentioned by Snorri Sturluson.
Researchers at three Swedish universities linked the inscription to extreme weather events from 535, 536 A.D. These occurred roughly 300 years before the stone was carved near the early 9th century and point to a carbon-14 spike dated 774, 775 CE marking the strongest known solar storm ever recorded.