Watching Star Wars with Viking Age Subtitles

An analysis of cohesion and coherence in the Rök runestone inscription

Abstract

The famous early Viking Age Rök runestone inscription has been considered missing linguistic links which would have shown how its passages are connected. This study challenges these previous assumptions. It shows, to the contrary, that the riddles of the front side can be understood as closely connected to riddles of the opposite side. A key to the interpretation is that the riddles are taken to concern what is visible from the stone: the lunar changes of the year, the sunrise at the autumn equinox and the movement of stars the same night – all conceived as dimensions of an ongoing cosmological battle.