A WALKER has discovered a mysterious stone inscribed with 1200-year-old Viking graffiti which could provide the first tangible evidence that the fearsome Norse raiders gave up raping and pillaging to live alongside native Scots.

Experts believe the palm-sized slate unearthed in a rabbit burrow and carved with runes, an alphabetic script used by the peoples of Northern Europe from the first century AD, could be the work of a Viking raider or a first generation Danish settler.

The find in Dalgety Bay in Fife sheds light on Scotland's long-lost links with Scandinavia and the runic system of writing, which as well as a means of communication served as a system of symbols used for magic and divination.

Fife was not previously known to be a Scandinavian stronghold but the exact meaning of the inscription, which is believed to date from the ninth to twelfth century AD, remains a mystery and experts from Cambridge University have been drafted in to help solve the riddle.

The Vikings are known to have ransacked Fife in the Middle Ages (where they massacred 600 monks at May Island) but prior to this find there was little evidence of their settlement in the area. Douglas Spiers, senior archaeologist at Fife Council, said: ''Runic inscriptions are very rare in mainland Scotland. They are not common at all outwith Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles.

''It is amazing that this has been found in such a lowland central Scotland position. In relation to the analysis of this stone and its runic inscription, the general consensus is one of slight confusion.

''This is undoubtedly a runic inscription; the questions are what kind, and when was it carved?

''The problem boils down to this: if the runes are Anglo-Saxon, then they use variant forms for the same letter (S), which are hundreds of years apart.

''If they are Scandinavian, then the letter associations are extremely unusual and do not represent any standard combinations of Germanic words, so they must be initials or at least single letters used to represent words. This is unusual unless we are talking about the initials of individuals.''

A similar runic inscription has also been found on a large glacial boulder called the Pittarthie stone which may have been used by Viking settlers to mark the perimeters of their farmland.

Mr Spiers added: ''The stone (found in Dalgety Bay) could be Viking graffiti written by some Scandinavian who was rampaging all the way across Fife, or it could be the work of a family of Scandinavian origin, who were part of the resident population here.

''The hostile contact with the Vikings was principally in the ninth century AD and by the tenth and eleventh century, people whose grandfather had first come here as part of a raiding party, seem to have embarked on a degree of active

settlement.

''To a certain extent, they had given up their old life and blended in with the local population. The Pittarthie stone is very badly worn and it may not be possible to render a meaning but it could have been used by a Scandinavian family to mark the boundary of their farm.''