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I was checking out the new Viking Age exhibit in Minneapolis and noticed something weird about a runestone.
The info card said it was a boundary marker from around 900 AD, but the carved lines looked exactly like a stick figure dog... complete with a little tail. I asked the docent about it and she just shrugged and said 'maybe the carver was having a slow day'. Has anyone else seen ancient carvings that look suspiciously like modern doodles?
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wood.john1mo ago
Well gosh, that docent's comment about the carver having a slow day actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it. But here's what gets me - how do we even know these carvings weren't just someone's idea of a joke back then? I mean, we look at a runestone and assume every single mark has some deep spiritual meaning or tells us about their migration patterns or whatever. But what if some Viking guy just thought it'd be funny to carve a little dog with a wagging tail into the stone before his buddy showed up to do the real boundary markings? That feels way more human to me than all the serious academic interpretations. So my real question is, how much of what we call "ancient symbolism" is actually just ancient people messing around that historians are too serious to admit?
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miller.avery2mo ago
Saw a thing about Roman soldiers carving dicks into walls as graffiti. Guess people have always just drawn dumb stuff.
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