HE RAN FOR VALHALLA ON THE CLIMATE CHANGE TICKET

The Emperor of Stones

By DANIEL WEISS   July/August 2020

In the language of the Vikings, Old Norse rök means  “monolith,” and no other runestone stands out from its peers in more ways than Sweden’s Rök. The five-ton stone measures eight feet tall... covered with the longest runic inscription in existence... 

“It’s the emperor of runestones,” says Henrik Williams, a runologist at Uppsala University. “Nothing can compare with it." Now a new  interpretation... ties it to a devastating sixth-century climate crisis

The scholars believe the line describes the death of the sun and refers to a period beginning  in  A.D. 536  when a series of volcanic  eruptions  is known to have blocked sunlight for several years, leading to mass starvation... 

“We know that there were solar storms that turned the sky red and would have caused very cold summers,” Williams says. “And there was a near-total solar eclipse that would have scared the hell out of people.” 

With the threat of a crisis looming, Vamoth is described... as having been cut down before his time in order to help Odin’s army defeat the giants, ensuring that the sun would continue to shine.