runic inscription
A runic inscription is an inscription made in one of the various runic alphabets. They generally contained practical information or memorials instead of magic or mythic stories. The body of runic inscriptions falls into the three categories of El ...
of debated authenticity discovered in the Kleines Schulerloch cave that was found in 1937,
Altmühl
The Altmühl (, la, Alchmona, Alcmana, Almonus) s.v. is a river in
valley (near
Essing
Essing is a municipality in the district of Kelheim in Bavaria in Germany. It lies on the river Altmühl
The Altmühl (, la, Alchmona, Alcmana, Almonus)Bavaria
Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...
) was not noticed until the 1950s. It reads
:''birg : leub : selbrade'',
probably meaning "Birg, beloved of Selbrad", next to a drawing of an ibex or stag scratched into the stone from perhaps the same time, but whose the authenticity is also debated. The inscription was generally considered to be fake shortly after its discovery.
The discovery of a parallel inscription in grave 172 of the "Unterer Stollen" cemetery in
Bad Krozingen
Bad Krozingen (; Alemannic: ''Bad Chrotzige'') is a spa town in the district Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated 15 km southwest of Freiburg. In the 1970s, the previously independent villages Biengen, H ...
in 2001, reading
:''boba : leub , agirike''
revived discussions regarding the authenticity of the Kleines Schulerloch inscription. Still, in 2003, Looijenga concluded that the inscription is an obvious falsification. In 2012, Findell, accepting the Bad Krozingen inscription as genuine, noted that most scholars still objected to its authenticity and considered the Kleines Schulerloch inscription to be at least "suspect".
See also
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List of runestones
There are about 3,000 runestones in Scandinavia (out of a total of about 6,000 runic inscriptions). p. 38.
The runestones are unevenly distributed in Scandinavia:
The majority is found in Sweden, estimated at between 1,700 and 2,500 (depending o ...
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Runic alphabet
Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...