The Northerners may have simply borrowed the Roman letters and adapted ... with the talismanic properties of their alphabet. These experts, called Rune Masters, were specially trained to bring ...

Experts believe the Roman alphabet may have inspired the Scandinavians to create their own writing system. Evidence of runic writing exists from the Roman Iron Age and the Viking era, but ...

It’s believed Germanic people drew inspiration from the Roman alphabet to create the characters, according to the museum, but the exact origins of runes and how they were used has remained murky.

The Norwegian team's research supports a hypothesis proposed in 2011 by Ms Imer, suggesting the earliest rune stones date back to the Late Roman Period (AD 160-375).