Watching Star Wars with Viking Age Subtitles

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.

Authors

Publication Details

Journal
Arkiv för nordisk filologi
Published
2025-05-02
DOI
https://doi.org/10.63420/anf.v137i.27894
Primary Topic
Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Watching Star Wars with Viking Age Subtitles

Per Holmberg
Arkiv för nordisk filologi
Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies
article

Watching Star Wars with Viking Age Subtitles

Per Holmberg
article en

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.

Arkiv för nordisk filologiVol. 137
Vetenskapsrådet
Openalex Percentile: Top 91%
Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies
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Watching Star Wars with Viking Age Subtitles — Per Holmberg · Arkiv för nordisk filologi (2025) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS