{"id":121337,"date":"2023-12-09T10:49:18","date_gmt":"2023-12-09T10:49:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogcamlodipine.com\/?p=121337"},"modified":"2023-12-09T10:49:18","modified_gmt":"2023-12-09T10:49:18","slug":"historians-stunned-by-cheeky-viking-graffiti-etched-into-ancient-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogcamlodipine.com\/world-news\/historians-stunned-by-cheeky-viking-graffiti-etched-into-ancient-wall\/","title":{"rendered":"Historians stunned by ‘cheeky’ Viking graffiti etched into ancient wall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hagia Sophia: Turkey criticised by Borrell for conversion plan<\/h3>\n

In communities up and down the country, many see graffiti as a form of vandalism, something that damages property and causes public safety issues.<\/p>\n

You may be forgiven for thinking it is a modern-day phenomenon, helped by cheap paint and the rapid rise of urbanisation.<\/p>\n

But you’d be wrong, as humans have, for hundreds of thousands of years, engaged in some form of graffiti \u2014 Stone Age cave paintings perhaps the best example of this.<\/p>\n

In the subsequent years, humans from across the world sought to make their mark on both old and new lands, ensuring that it was known that this or that belonged to them.<\/p>\n

Perhaps nowhere better is this displayed than at Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque, where more than 1,000 years ago, a visiting Viking left a cheeky message etched into one of the monument’s walls.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: <\/strong> Archaeologists taken aback by evidence of Vikings in Arab world<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The story goes that on a balmy Thracian Sunday, 1,100 years ago, during a liturgy given inside what was then a Greek Orthodox Church, a bored soldier carved his name into the wall.<\/p>\n

Except he wasn’t Greek or even from any nearby lands, but a Viking mercenary travelled from Scandinavia.<\/p>\n

His signature is something you would find replicated anywhere around the world and is extremely cheeky: “Halfdan carved these runes,\u201d it reads, or, more simply, “Halfdan was here”.<\/p>\n

Today, a transparent plastic casing protects the inscription, which can be found in the gallery on the second floor of the Mosque, which before 2020 had been a museum.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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Archaeologists taken aback by evidence of Vikings in Arab world[LATEST] <\/strong>
Discovery of 7,000 bones uncovers the dark history of Europe’s animal sacrifices[INSIGHT] <\/strong><\/p>\n