Brown Bag Lunch – Runes and Runic Inscriptions with Loraine Jensen
May 21 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
What are runes? What does runic writing teach about Scandinavian ancestry? Come and learn about the nearly 7,000 runes and runic inscriptions in the world today. This presentation will provide an overview of runic inscriptions, primarily in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark and some being researched in North America. Also reviewed with be examples of runes in pop culture. Come and learn about the most well-known runestone in North America, the Kensington Runestone and the newest runic find in Ontario, Canada, the Wawa Runestone.
Loraine Jensen is the founder and volunteer Executive Director of the American Association for Runic Studies (AARS), a nonprofit organization based in Minnesota that promotes scholarly research of runes and runic inscriptions in Europe and North America. She has developed extensive networks on runic research that have resulted in two Fulbright Specialist appointments to study at Uppsala University in Sweden. In 2022 she was awarded the Pedagogical Prize from the Royal Gustav Adolfs Academy for Swedish Folk Culture for her valuable efforts in spreading scientifically based knowledge about runic inscriptions to an interested public throughout North America, and in 2025 was presented the first ever Community Impact Award by the Danish American Center in Minneapolis.