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Trollhättan Stone
The Trollhättan Stone is a Viking Age rune stone designated in the Rundata catalog as Vg 99A. It was found at the mouth of a shallow cave near Trollhättan Falls, on the Göta älv, in Sweden, in 1901. The stone presents a difficult task for translators, as it appears to have been part of a larger rune stone, now lost. The stone is local limestone, "approximately 76 × 41 × 15 cm in size, its thickness tapering down to a thin and jagged edge. The obverse of the stone is rough and unfinished. The stone’s face is decorated with the lower parts of an animal, likely a wolf, wrapped in the coils of a serpent, in style Pr1 (Ringerike). Below this are three deeply incised runes: k-a-r."

The symbols represent the runes Kaun, Ansuz, and Reið. The origin and meaning of the word are matters of dispute, though a general agreement exists among scholars that the word represents a metaphor for a mythological species of beast that is part wolf and part serpent. Dr. Just Bing, in his 1914 monograph “Rock Carvings of the Norse Bronze Age”, theorized that the k-a-r sequence represented the name of the so-called “plague-folk”, kaunar. While most scholars agreed with Bing's theory, they were quick to point out that the mysterious plague-folk were likely lepers and not mythical beasts.