Runes are the characters of the alphabet used by the Vikings and other Germanic peoples from about the second to the 15th centuries A.D. Some runes vaguely resemble letters in our own alphabet ...

Two rare artifacts inscribed with ancient letters, or runes, could be the key to a mysterious era of Viking history when they suddenly abandoned their old alphabet and transitioned to a new one.

Perhaps no one has ever been as excited to see a comb as Danish archaeologist Søren Sindbæk. He and a team of archaeologists from Aarhus University recently unearthed one at a historic Viking ...