Patterned after Project Gutenberg, it was founded by Lars Aronsson and colleagues at Linköping University and began archiving Nordic-language literature in December 1992.

As of 2015 it had accomplished digitization to provide graphical facsimiles of old works such as the Nordisk familjebok, and had accomplished, in whole or in part, the text extractions and copyediting of these as well as esteemed Latin works and English translations from Nordic authors, and sheet music and other texts of cultural interest.

[1][2] The Project began archiving its first Nordic-language literature pieces (parts of the Fänrik Ståls Sägner, of Nordic dictionaries and of a Bible from 1917) in December 1992.

The Project was thereby given the name of Finland's national poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg, and so contained a further allusion based on the meanings of its component parts — Rune (letter in Runic script) and berg (mountain) — so that in most Nordic languages it can be translated loosely as "mountain of letters".

[3] As of 2015 it had accomplished digitization to provide graphical facsimiles of old works such as the Nordisk familjebok,[2][better source needed] and had accomplished, in whole or in part, the text extractions and copyediting of these as well as esteemed Latin works[citation needed] and English translations from Nordic authors – e.g., Carl August Hagberg's interpretations of Shakespeare's plays[2] – and sheet music and other texts of cultural interest.