Case file · Folklore / legend
The Runamo 'inscription'
For centuries, cracks in a rock dike at Runamo, Blekinge, were believed to be runes; in the 1830s the Icelandic scholar Finn Magnusen claimed to read them as a poem about the battle of Brávellir.
1833 CE · 56.24, 15.10 · status: explained
The account
A Danish royal commission examined the site in 1833, and Magnusen published his reading in 1841.
The sceptical view
J. J. A. Worsaae showed in 1844 that the 'runes' are natural fractures, a famous case of seeing patterns where none exist.