Rurik held the wooden board in his hands and handed it to Vilia with a kind face.
What did the child carve on the wooden board? After all, they are some weird marks.
Vilia was full of curiosity, but her mentality was very peaceful, until she saw the astonishing markings on the wooden board with the help of the light of the oil lamp.
Those were some markings that shocked her!
The lower right corner of every rune letter I saw was engraved with a new letter. right! That was another alphabet. How could Rurik know this? !
Vilia's eyes widened, and the aging wrinkles on her face trembled.
"You...you...what on earth did you carve?!" She muttered tremblingly, then her hands loosened, and the board fell directly onto the animal skins on the ground.
There was no kind expression on Vilia's face anymore, and her appearance even frightened Rurik.
"Grandma Priest, did I do something wrong?"
"No! You didn't." Vilia swallowed hard, then picked up the fallen board and continued to stare at the incredible traces.
She fell into deep thought, and for a while Rurik could only stare, waiting for the old man to speak again.
The lower-level priests who were doing their daily work realized that something was wrong with the atmosphere and consciously stopped what they were doing. The entire chief priest's house suddenly fell into silence, everyone was waiting for Villa to speak. The only sounds in the room were the faint crackle of the charcoal fire and the squeaking of the seal's fat being fried in the hot cast iron pot.
A fierce ideological struggle was going on in Vilia's mind.
Finally, she made a decision.
"Rurik!" Villa asked the child in front of him with a sullen face and an extremely serious attitude, "Do you know Rome?"
"You...what did you say?!"
"Rome. It's Rome! A powerful city in the far south."
In fact, Rurik still couldn't understand it very clearly. He seemed to understand that what Villa pointed out was "Eastern Rome", but what was going on in the city.
After some thinking, he finally understood the situation. The "Rome" here indeed refers to "Eastern Rome".
Because all the Viking forces are still in the tribal stage, and their largest organization is still the tribal alliance, they do not have a clear concept of country, and naturally they do not have a clear vocabulary to describe "country".
At this time, Rurik didn't know how to answer. He had no idea that Priest Vilia knew about distant Rome?
The Mediterranean and the Baltic Sea are simply two unrelated worlds!
No! Wait!
Suddenly, Rurik thought of his own home. As the leader, his father had a locked wooden box, which was mainly filled with metal.
Those were coins, mostly tribute from the residents of Novgorod. These minted coins can be exchanged for some goods with other tribes, and their purchasing power is a mystery.
The locals in Novgorod did not have the ability to mint coins at all, and the currency they used came from Eastern Rome.
Those currencies are printed with the portraits of the characters and the annotations of the vocabulary.
Rurik had an idea and reluctantly explained: "I saw some special letters on the coins that my father showed me. My father said that they were the writing of distant Rome. So I used them."
This explanation is not convincing at all!
The wily Villa knew the boy was lying just by looking at his face.
"My child, what you say is not true. Your father Otto did not understand the use of Roman writing, and those Romans hardly used the writing you marked. This is a more ancient writing, and I am not familiar with it. My understanding is also very limited. But you! You actually used it. And...you..."
In the ninth century, Eastern Rome became more Hellenistic. Latin and its writing had declined, and Greek and the Greek alphabet became the mainstream of society. Therefore, the new coins minted by the government are brighter in quality than the old coins that have been in circulation for hundreds of years, and the inscriptions on them naturally become Greek.
Therefore, Rurik should not know Roman letters, but Greek letters.
Vilia's eyes widened. She felt like she was carrying a huge burden, and her whole body was suffocated by the intensely oppressive atmosphere. Her spirit was shaken violently, for Rurik, whose knowledge of the Roman alphabet was itself a miracle.
"Rurik, you know the ancient letters of the Romans, and you use them very correctly. The letters you carved are still used by the Franks, and the letters you carved are the same as those they used.
Only two people in our tribe know this unique alphabet! "
"Huh?!" Rurik himself was instantly more frightened. He never imagined that things could turn out like this.
"Who? Which two people?"
"You are! And me." Vilia stretched out her head and looked at Rurik's smiling face seriously, "Now look straight out of the corner of your eyes and tell me honestly, who taught you this?"
"This..." Rurik couldn't explain it at the moment.
Vilia used her imagination and asked tentatively: "Are they the women from Novgorod? Only their people have a better chance of contacting the Romans."
Rurik can actually give Vilia a very simple conclusion: I am born with this knowledge.
But he couldn't guarantee what trouble he would cause if he said this. The now over seventy-year-old Priest Vilia was already overly excited, and he was afraid that the old man would have a heart attack due to his overexcitement.
Hearing what Vilia said, Rurik seemed to have grasped a life-saving straw and nodded vigorously: "Yes! Yes! Is it from those people that I learned this from my sister Peravina?"
"You... lie!" Velya objected on the spot, then pouted his withered mouth with almost all the teeth missing, and said regretfully: "Those women from Novgorod are a group of stupid people, they don't have any Do not understand any writing. Including the people of our tribe, only a few people know our own rune writing! In our Roseburg, only a few people know how to write their own names! This is the saddest thing to me. Yes, only you! Rurik, you are the hope of our tribe."
Rurik was a little happy to be praised by Vilia suddenly.
Immediately afterwards, a new question came: "You can't learn anything from stupid people, especially these Roman letters. Tell me who taught you."
"this……"
"Tell me the truth, or else!" Vilia looked around, thinking that since the child's father had already led the warriors on the last large-scale hunting before the extreme cold, who could take good care of Rurik at this time? Where is this little kid?
Vilia made a fierce move and said in a threatening tone: "If you can't give me a satisfactory answer, you can't leave here."
threaten? A real threat.
Rurik looked troubled, and it seemed that he could only tell the truth, but did Vilia believe it?
From the current situation, it seems that I can only use the excuse of "being born with it".
"Yes! I just understand the language of the Romans." Rurik muttered deliberately.
"What did you say?"
After all, Vilia is very old, has some blurred vision, and is also slightly deaf.
Rurik guessed that this matter should not be made public. He stood up and approached the ear of Vilia who was sitting cross-legged. He muttered deliberately: "Grandma Priest, this is my innate knowledge. Apart from it, I There is much more to know. This knowledge has been in my mind since the first time I saw the light.”
