Secret Messages on Stone 🪨 Cracking the Code of the Vikings✨📜

Have you ever needed to tell someone something — but they weren’t there to hear it? Maybe you left a note, or drew a little picture. That’s the magic of writing: it lets your thoughts wait patiently for someone else to find them later. 💌

Humans have always needed to communicate. Long before phones or computers, books, people talked by using signs, pictures, gestures, and later… written symbols. Do you remember all those charts from the story of language? The pictographs painted in caves 🐾, the clay tablets pressed with symbols in Mesopotamia 🧱, the sacred hieroglyphs carved in Egypt 🦅 — and finally, the invention of the alphabet.

✨ With an alphabet, many words can be written using only a few symbols. In English, we use just 26 letters. Over time, we’ve used these same letters again and again to build over 600,000 words! If we count scientific and technical terms, the number climbs to nearly a million! 🤯 And all of it… from just a small handful of symbols which can fit in a wooden box.

People have always wanted to remember and to be remembered. So they wrote. The word “write” means “to scratch or carve.” And that’s exactly what humans did. They scratched messages into clay and stone. They painted stories on walls and pressed symbols into wax and tablets. They carved onto bone and antler. They wrote about everything : 📜✨How to make bread? 🍞 Who owed ten goats ? 🐐How the stars moved? 🌌Legends and stories about how the world was made.🗺️

And then… those messages waited. For hundreds… sometimes thousands of years.

Eventually, people began to discover these ancient writings. But there was one problem: many of them were written in strange symbols that no one could read anymore. 😮So, curious people, like you and me, began to ask: Who wrote this? What does it mean? Why was it important enough to write down?

So they became language detectives. 🕵️‍♀️ Some of them are called epigraphers — a big word, but let's break it down. In Greek the suffix “epi” means "upon" and the root “graphein” mean "to write". So epigraphers are the ones who read what was written on top of different surfaces, clay, bone, or wood — writings that waited for hundreds or even thousands of years for someone to decode them.

And guess what epigraphers found? 📜 Recipes , laws, love letters, poems, lists of food, songs to the gods, and even maps of adventures! 🗺️ It turns out, people thousands of years ago weren’t so different from us — they had stories to tell, food to make, places to go, and legends to leave behind.

People keep finding ancient scripts all the time. Around 1,800 years ago, scientist found messages found carved deep into stone — up in the misty mountains, near wild forests, along fjords and frozen rivers. ❄️🌲⛰️These markings weren’t just random scratches. They were carefully made — as if someone long ago wanted to say something important… but what? 🪨✨

Thanks to the hard work of epigraphers — those writing detectives — we’ve been able to decode many of these carvings on stones called Runes. 🗿 The word rune means “secret”. But what were the secrets, who wrote them and what was written?

By learning to read these ancient symbols, people today have discovered а fearless seafaring people called the Vikings. About 1,200 years ago, they invented clever ways to find their way through icy seas in long wooden ships with carved dragon heads. 🐉⛵ They were brave explorers, clever toolmakers, and incredible storytellers, who passed their stories through carvings. They created their own myths, and believed the world was held together by a giant tree!

They had their own writing system which looked quite interesting! Even though paper had already been invented in China, they did not use it because on stormy seas and damp shores, paper didn’t last long. No paper? No problem! They looked around and carved their words into long lasting materials like wood, bone, antler, metal… and stone. 🪓🪵🗿The writing system they used was called Futhark, and it looked like that. It's named after its first six letters: ᚠ (F), ᚢ (U), ᚦ (Th), ᚨ (A), ᚱ (R), and ᚲ (K). Just like how our alphabet starts A-B-C, theirs began F-U-TH-A-R-K! The letters look like twigs snapped at sharp angles.

🧝‍♂️There’s a legend about how these markings began…The Vikings believed in mighty gods and magical forces. One of their most powerful gods was Odin. He had only one eye — because he gave the other away in exchange for wisdom. To unlock the secrets of the world, Odin made a great sacrifice: He hung from the great World Tree, without food or drink, for nine days and nine nights. 🌌 At last, the tree whispered its secrets. Odin saw powerful symbols hidden in its branches — each one holding meaning, mystery, and magic. Those symbols became the Viking runic alphabet: the Futhark.

For many years, runes were the way Norse people wrote their stories, carved their names, and marked their treasures. But then, something began to change…As Vikings traveled and traded, they met new cultures where writing looked different—where Latin letters were used, like the ones you’re reading right now!

✝️ When Christianity began to spread in the north, new ideas came with it, including books, churches, and a new way of writing. Priests and monks taught reading and writing using the Latin alphabet — the same one we use today: A-B-C. At first, people used both systems. But slowly, the old runes were used less and less… until most people stopped carving them altogether.

Still, they never truly vanished. You can still see them on runestones standing in fields, in museums, on jewelry, and even in fantasy stories and video games! People today study runes to understand the past — and to remember the clever hands that carved them.

I wonder... 💭 What do you think the Vikings used to carve runes on stones ? 💡 Imagine holding a piece of iron and scratching these shapes into stone. What kind of strength, care, or patience would that take?

📝Can you write your own secret message with Runes? Maybe a hidden word, a riddle, or a wish and give it to a friend to become a language detective and decode it ! Here’s a Futhark alphabet chart you can use, maybe draw it in your journal and use it to record your secrets with.

🌍✨ Inspiration for further Exploration 🔍

⚒️Fundamental Needs of the Vikings

Using your Fundamental Needs chart, research:

• Shelter: What materials were Viking homes made of?

• Clothing: What did they wear in icy weather?

• Defense: What kind of armor or weapons did they invent?

• Art: How did they decorate their jewelry, brooches, or tools?

• Spiritual life: What rituals or offerings did they leave behind?

💬 We can use the History Question Charts to ask some questions about Vikings and browse in our books for the answers.

🟫The Nature of the Country

Q: What kinds of land and water forms were there?

🌊 The Vikings lived among fjords — steep cliffs with narrow sea passages, icy rivers, rocky shores, and deep forests. This wild land gave them wood for ships, stones for carving, and fish from cold northern waters. Their homes were built from sod and timber to stay warm during the long winters.

🟩The Practical Activities of the People

Q: What tools and techniques did they have? What kind of technology did they use?

🛠 Viking blacksmiths were clever and skilled. They made strong swords by twisting iron and steel together like ropes — this created a blade that was both beautiful and tough. Their ships were high-tech too! Longships were made with overlapping wooden planks, making them fast and flexible — perfect for crossing rough seas or sneaking up rivers.

🟦The Intellectual and Spiritual Aspects of the Culture

Q: What were their religious beliefs? What were their ideas of life and death?

🧝‍♂️ The Vikings believed the world was held together by a giant tree called Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life. They thought brave warriors who died in battle would go to Valhalla, a great hall in the sky ruled by Odin, the one-eyed god of wisdom. They believed in many gods and magical creatures — and even thought the Northern Lights were shimmering reflections from their magical world above!

🟥Relations within the Group and with Other Groups

Q: What about travel and migration?

⛵Vikings didn’t stay in one place. They sailed across wild seas to trade, explore, and sometimes settle in new lands. They reached Iceland, Greenland, and even North America — almost 500 years before Columbus! At a place called L’Anse aux Meadows in Canada, scientists found Viking homes, tools, and even a blacksmith’s workshop!

With Montessori joy,

Vanina 😊