This Viking runestone is not a battle epic but a chilling warning of climate catastrophe. | The History Page

In ninth-century Sweden a Viking father named Varinn erected a massive stone monument for his fallen son and to warn of a past climate catastrophe that nearly ended his people's nine worlds. The stone known as the Rok runestone dates to around 800 AD and carries over 700 complex runic characters. Scholars once believed it recounted epic battles and lost kings but new research links its tale to a volcanic winter between 536 and 550 AD when darkness and cold brought mass starvation and hardship ac