Many are unaware of the artistic heritage in rune stones and a great way to explore some of them around Stockholm is by bicycle. Bike lines runs through the city and enjoy the rare pleasures, fresh air, birdsong and wind in your hair. You´ll find the most amazing stones interplay between the city and the urban nature and travel in time with public declaration and messages from 400 AC.
There is around 6000 rock engravings left in the world and 2500 of them are in Sweden, nobody know how many of them they where in the beginning.The carvings was executed by scratching, pecking and grinding the rock to break the surface, then grinding the depth with stone a hammer and point.There is 24 writing signs, each sign represent the sound of the wording, during the viking era the language change drastically and modify to 16 signs. The writing are done between two lines with a dragon like head in the beginning and a snake tail at the end. There is no numbers in rune writing and you have to write all the numbers, for example 1967 is written onethousandninehundredsixtyseven. Rune stones forge a link with the past and must be one of the first twitter messages that´s been executed in Sweden, or Svithiodh as they said in the viking era. It´s breathtaking to know that they twitted already 1600 years ago - so nothing new under the sun. The stones where often placed along the route, coastline and rivers, so they could be seen by many people as possible. There messages is a statement from the past, written as poems or fairy tale, so attractive that everyone that stopped would be seduced by it. Civilization began in a tranquil countryside and the stones is part of the Swedish cultural identity, where many western styles and habits are regarded as the superior. Today´s generation isn´t even sure what Swedish tradition is, they don´t know what is being lost if the stone´s sweeping away in city development and only exist as a collective memory. In the old days, back to 1600 century rune stones where used as building materials in the floors and foundation, in Uppsala Cathedral they have found 14 of them in the floors and foundation. As today´s twitter, there have been very productive and leading rune writers, a couple of them sign there stones with Öpir and Fot and they engage with society, created entire tradition from scratch - it´s 1600 years of ancient tradition that need to keep alive.
