Sf climate change and its consequences are one of the main challenges of the coming century, concerns about them are not new. As the Swedish daily points out Dagens Nyheter in an article marked by International mail, the immense Rök stone, four meters high and located south of Stockholm, refers to a natural disaster in a text that runologists have recently managed to translate.
According to them, the 760 signs of this text, painted in red, date back to the beginning of the 9th century, at the time of the Vikings. While scientists have long believed that they were dwelling on the warlike exploits of a king in the 6th century, runologists found that they were actually referring to a major climate catastrophe that occurred between 536 and 547.
According to their interpretation of the text, three volcanic eruptions in Iceland would have darkened the sky and blocked the sun for many years, especially in the North, which resulted in “years of extreme cold, poor harvests and famine”.
“The end of times and events”
This reinterpretation of the Rök Stone coincides with historical and mythological accounts of other texts in Old Norse, a medieval Scandinavian language, according to its authors. Runologists also believe that this text can be interpreted as “a kind of ceremonial prayer”. And for good reason, its formulation would evoke “the end of time and events” with “the terrible death of the Sun, then its resurrection”. Despite objections and criticisms of this theory, Dagens Nyheter esteem both credible and evocative.
