The Rök Runestone
The Rök stone (Rökstenen), the famous ninth-century runestone of Östergötland, raised beside Lake Vättern in memory of a dead son. Its inscription of more than 700 runes is the longest known runic text in the world, a riddling composition in verse that mentions Theodoric the Great, named heroes, and the runes themselves, and has been read as both a memorial and a locked challenge to be unravelled. Carved on every face of the stone in several scripts and cipher styles, the text was long studied by runologists, and modern readings have proposed everything from heroic legend to a reckoning of the