Svingerudsteinen dates to before 300 AD. It contains the first three letters of the runic alphabet -- 'f,' 'u' and 'th' -- on one of its sides, according to the museum.
have discovered the world's oldest dated runestone, featuring runic inscriptions from up to 2,000 years ago.
Burnt bones and charcoal from the cremation pit where it was discovered revealed that the writing was carved into the reddish-brown sandstone boulder, measuring about a foot in height and width, between 1 and 250 AD.
Scandinavia has several thousand runestones from the Viking Age -- between 793 and 1066 AD -- but there is less evidence of runes from earlier times. "Runestones with runes from the older futhark are very rarely found in dateable, archaeological contexts and we understood that this had the potential to give us new knowledge about runes," Steinar Solheim, archaeologist and excavation manager at the Museum of Cultural History, told CNN Wednesday. He said the discovery was"something unique."
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