The Käymäjärvi Inscriptions refers to insciptions on a stone approximately 52.5 cm high and 105 cm wide, engraved with some variety of Runic alphabet. The stone is today so degraded, it is no longer possible to compare it with other scripts such as Orkhon script. It is located near Lake Käymäjärvi, about 26 km north-east of Payala parish, Northern Sweden.

It was first reported by Olof Rudbeck, Sr. (1630-1702) in the second volume of Atlantica (1689). The local inhabitants, especially the Saami, considered the stone to carry a very important message from their ancestors.

The second author to report it is Eric Brunnius (1706-83) in a dissertion about Tornio (De urbe Torna; 1731) from Uppsala University where he states that the stone has rune characters and the engraving of a triple crown but which by that time had been degraded and is now absent. The physicist Anders Celsius (1701-44), also an early runologist, concluded that the inscriptions were not of runic character.

Celsius and Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759) visited the stone around April 11, 1737, during their earth meridian measurement expedition. The tale of this travel and stone, at that time considered to be very exotic in nature, was presented in his application to the Académie des Sciences, and may have influenced the Academy's decision to elect him to the academy.

Sources

Tobé, Erik, "Maupertius' "Berättelse om en färd till det inre av Lappland för att finna ett gammalt minnesmärke"", Oknytt No. 1-4, 1999, Vol. 20