KYLVER STONE

limestone slab that bears a 5th-century runic inscription, providing the oldest extant record of the Germanic runic series; it was found in a tomb in the province of Gotland in Sweden. The runes faced the inside of a coffin and probably were intended either to protect the grave or to bind the dead person to it. In addition to the runic alphabet, the rune carver also carved a reinforced t-rune that looked like a fir tree and the uninterpreted palindrome (a word that reads the same backward or forward) sueus in order to achieve the magical protection desired.