Also in the vicinity is a collection of Viking Age graves and twelve large tumuli from the Swedish Migration Period, of which one is Norrland's largest. In addition to its runic inscription, it has some crosses marking the Christianization of the 11th century Medelpad.

A transliteration of the runic inscription is: The Old Norse text on the stone translates into English as:

Although the earliest definite written examples of Frisian are from approximately the 9th century, there are a few examples of runic inscriptions from the region which are probably older and possibly in the Frisian language.

These runic writings however usually do not amount to more than single- or few-word inscriptions, and cannot be said to constitute literature as such.

The subdialect of Old East Norse spoken in Sweden is called "Runic Swedish" and the one in Denmark "Runic Danish" (there was also a subdialect spoken in Gotland, Old Gutnish) but until the 12th century, the dialect was the same in the two countries with the main exception of a Runic Danish monophthongization (see below).

The dialects are called "runic" because the main body of text appears in the runic alphabet.

An early change that separated Runic Danish from the other dialects of Old East Norse was the change of the diphthong "æi" to the monophthong "é", as in "stæinn" to "sténn" "stone".

This is reflected in runic inscriptions where the older read "stain" and the later "stin".

This change is shown in runic inscriptions as a change from "tauþr" into "tuþr".

These innovations had affected most of the Runic Swedish speaking area as well in the end of the period, with the exception of the dialects spoken north and east of Mälardalen where the diphthongs still exist in remote areas.

The first of these was "Runic" (the second ship of that name), launched on 25 October 1900.

"Runic" and "Suevic" had several minor design changes, the most noticeable of which were the lengthening of the poop deck, and the moving of the bridge closer to the bow.

Some scholars (e.g. Braune) claim that it was derived from the Greek alphabet only, while others maintain that there are some Gothic letters of Runic or Latin origin.

For the most part, Gothic is known to be significantly closer to Proto-Germanic than any other Germanic language, except for that of the (scantily attested) early Norse runic inscriptions.

Gothic retains a morphological passive voice inherited from Indo-European, but unattested in all other Germanic languages, except for the single fossilised form preserved in, for example, Old English "hātte" or Runic Norse (AD 400) "haitē" "am called", derived from the verb "*haitanaN" "to call, command".

Study of Ancient Runes, more commonly known as Ancient Runes, is a generally theoretical subject that studies the ancient runic scripts.

It has a runic inscription consisting of a horizontal partial listing of the first twenty of the twenty-four rune sequence of the Elder Futhark: The full listing of the elder futhark is known from the inscription on the Kylver Stone (early 5th century).

The term "félag" is mentioned on a broad range of runic inscriptions, most notably in the form "félagi" (see etymology section), in these contexts meaning "comrade", "weapon brother" or "partner".