Today Slavic languages are spoken in Eastern Europe, in countries like Russia, Poland, Czech, and Serbia, to name a few. But almost a thousand year earlier there lived Slavic speaking tribes close to today’s Netherlands. See the map below and compare it with today’s political borders.
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The oldest runestones in Sweden are written in a language that was called Old Scandinavian (or Proto Norse). In that time the language was understtod throughout Scandinavia.
I visited one of the runestones in Järsberg, Sweden, in the summer. And I encountered a verbform that is still easily read today: ᚹᚫᚱᛁᛏᚢ writu (write). So despite the almost 1500 years there is still something very common with the language.
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I visited during the summer holidays the perhaps best known runestone in Sweden. The stone is called “Rök runestone” and has both an impressive size and a lot of Runic Swedish in its inscription. Runic Swedish was the predecessor of today’s Swedish and it was spoken 1000 years ago.
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