TRAGEDY OF LONG AGO

Taranaki Daily News, 14 April 1932, Page 15

TRAGEDY OF LONG AGO

THIRST FOR VENGEANCE. REMARKABLE MONUMENT. A dark family tragedy which occurred eleven centuries ago, thirst for vengeance, and weird magic spell form the subject of an inscription on the world s most remarkable rune stone at Rock, in Sweden. By a recent decision of the Government this rune stone will now be removed from its present humble position to a high site overlooking the Ostrogothian Downs, which slope gently down from the mighty mountain of Omberg. The runic monument is known as the “Roek Stone,” as it was found in the parish of Roek in Oestergoetland, one of Sweden’s most beautiful and historically interesting provinces. In the midst of the fertile and smiling Ostrogothian plain an ancient cradle of Swedish cultnre, the stone with its mystic inscription stands as a sinister memorial of ancient times of violence and family feud.

For seventy years experts .on runes have grappled with the inscription, which includes runes in shorthand, the author being one of the greatest rune masters known to science, but the latest interpretation, ,which was recently given by Professor O. V. Friesen, of Upsala University, seems to be the most reliable one, says the Stockholm correspondent of the Observer, London. An old man by the name of Varin, he says, tells in the inscription of how his son was murdered and deplores that he is too old to wreak vengeance on the murderer according to e unwritten law of the age. He has, however, a son of tender age to whom he transfers the sacred duty of revenge. In parts the inscription, numbering some two hundred words, runs in alliterative verse, and in its austereness recalls the mystic poetry of the Icelandic Edda. The rune carver has inscribed the most powerf ' and violent magic spells and curses against the murderer. A great part of the text consists of a runic cipher, prohab'y witchcraft shorthand runes, which have long baftled the philologists who have attempted to decipher them and ascertain their hidden meaning. The stmie is probably the most interesting and remarkable o. all the archaeological remains of Teutonic antiquity, and the runes cut about 800 A.D. are as clean cut and legible as if they had been p-ade yesterday.