My oldest specimen is Danish, an overgang-stone (bearing Old-Northern as well as Scandinavian runes) from about the first half of the 9th century. The runic examples thus run down from the 9th to the 14th yearhundred.

“Well, where have you been?” he said to her with offhand laconism.

He played a slow but sure knock of 35.

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.