England runestones

• 1. Introduction

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  The England runestones are a collection of about 30 carved stones scattered across Scandinavia, each one a record of someone who crossed the North Sea to England during the Viking Age. Some came back rich. Some never came back at all. One stone in a church wall at Gamla Uppsala was raised by a man who proudly called himself a "traveller to England." Another, found face-down in a field near Linköping, lay hidden for nearly a thousand years before anyone could read what it said.

  These stones raise questions that the source material can only partially answer. Who were these travellers? What did they find when they arrived? And what kind of world did they return to, if they returned at all? The answers are carved in Old Norse with the Younger Futhark alphabet, and they have been waiting in churchyards, cathedral walls, and museum collections ever since.

• 2. The Danegeld Payments

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  During the 990s and the first decades of the 11th century, Anglo-Saxon rulers paid large sums of silver to Scandinavian raiders to stop them attacking. These payments were called Danegelds, and several of the England runestones are direct records of men who collected them.

  The most remarkable account belongs to Ulf of Borresta, commemorated on the runestone U 344 at Yttergärde. Ulf collected the danegeld not once but three times. The first was with Skagul Toste in 991. The second was with Thorkel the High in 1012. The third and final payment came from Canute the Great in 1018. The stone was found in 1868 by Richard Dybeck and today stands at the church of Orkesta. Because so many years passed between each expedition, scholars believe Ulf returned home to Sweden each time, living in between as a wealthy magnate.

  A paired monument at Lingsberg, the runestone U 241, tells of Ulfríkr, whose grandchildren raised the stone in his memory. He had received two danegelds in England. U 194, another stone classified in runestone style Pr3, was raised by a Viking who took a single danegeld and apparently survived to commission his own memorial. Both U 194 and U 344 are considered the earliest examples of the Urnes style inscription in Uppland.

  After Canute conquered England, he sent home most of the Vikings who had helped him. He kept a select bodyguard called the Thingmen, and members of that group also appear on several of the runestones.

• 3. The Dead and the Absent

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  Many of the England runestones do not celebrate wealth. They record loss. Across the Swedish provinces of Uppland, Södermanland, Västmanland, Östergötland, Småland, and Västergötland, the stones list men who died in England and were never brought home.

  One of the most striking cases is the Nävelsjö runestone, Sm 101, which records that a father died in England and was buried by his brother in Bath, Somerset. The stone names the place of burial, which is unusual. Knowing that a relative lay in English ground, far from any family plot, was apparently worth carving in stone.

  Sö 55 in Bjudby tells a different kind of story. Hefnir went to England and came back, only to die at home rather than overseas. His father raised the stone. Erik Brate, using evidence from the ansuz rune used for the o phoneme, argues that Hefnir joined a late 11th-century expedition organized by Sweyn Estridsson in 1069 to challenge William the Conqueror. The invasion had been planned over two years, but William bribed Asbjörn, Sweyn Estridsson's brother and the expedition's commander, and the force was turned aside without a serious battle.

  U 539 at the church of Husby-Sjuhundra tells of Sveinn, who never even reached England. He died in Jutland, probably in the Limfjord, where Canute the Great's great invasion fleet had assembled around 1015. Omeljan Pritsak notes that the Limfjord was typically the staging point for campaigns against England. When the fleet finally sailed, Sveinn was not on it.

  The stone for Sveinn carries a phrase about hoping that God and God's mother would treat the man better than he deserved. The source notes this was not a reflection on his character but a standard request for divine favour in the afterlife.

• 4. Warriors, Marshals, and Outliers

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  Not every England runestone commemorates a rank-and-file raider. Sö 160 at the church of Råby names a man who died in the assembly retinue, the þingalið, in England. The Thingmen were Canute's standing household troops, an elite corps kept after the main Viking force was disbanded.

  Sm 77 in Sävsjö memorializes a man whose full title only emerges from a second stone. The runestone was raised by Vrái for his brother, who died in England. Later, when Vrái himself died, a nearby stone, the Komstad Runestone, recorded that Vrái had served as the marshal, the stallari, of an earl Hakon. The source identifies this earl as probably Håkon Eiriksson.

  The Grinda Runestone, Sö 166 in Södermanland, commemorates a father named Guðvér who operated well beyond England. The inscription records that Guðvér divided payment in England and then manfully attacked townships in Saxony. Omeljan Pritsak interprets the payment divided as part of the danegeld, and Erik Brate links this expedition to the one mentioned on the Berga Runestone.

  Sm 5 in Transjö stands out for a different reason. It memorializes a son named Ketill who died in England, and describes him using the word óníðingr, which the Rundata database translates as "unvillainous." The word is the opposite of the Old Norse pejorative níðingr and was used to call a man virtuous. The same phrase, manna mæstr oniðingʀ, meaning "most unvillainous of men," appears on two other runestone inscriptions as well.

• 5. Stone, Style, and Survival

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  The runestones were not all carved the same way, and the differences in style carry meaning. The oldest inscriptions belong to runestone style RAK, which the source describes as the classification for inscriptions whose runic band ends do not have any attached serpent or beast heads. Many of the England runestones fall into this category, scattered across Uppland, Södermanland, Småland, Västergötland, and Norway.

  The classification system matters for dating. U 344, in style Pr3, can be dated to the first half of the 11th century because it uses the ansuz rune for both the a and æ phonemes and lacks dotted runes. Ög Fv1950;341 in Östergötland carries a date of around 1025. Its designation refers to the year and page number of the issue of Fornvännen in which the stone was first described, a naming convention used across the Rundata project.

  The physical survival of the stones is uneven. U 812 at the church of Hjälsta is believed to have been part of a coupled monument, but the stone that held the first half of the text has been lost. Sö 83 has disappeared entirely; what was once at the church of Tumbo is known only through earlier recordings. Gs 8, a sandstone fragment found in 1927 in Västra Hästbo, is today almost hidden behind a pillar inside the church of Torsåker.

  Size and condition vary widely. Ög Fv1950;341 is 3.95 metres tall, with 2.98 metres above ground, and 1.43 metres wide, though the surface is described as quite weathered. It was found in 1950 lying face-down on the property of the farm Kallerstad, broken into two pieces. Two names on that stone, Vígfastr and Helga, are noted as rare: Vígfastr appears on no other runestones at all.

• 6. Beyond Sweden

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  Twenty-seven of the roughly 30 England runestones were raised in modern-day Sweden, with 17 of those clustered in the provinces around Lake Mälaren. The distribution outside Sweden is thin but revealing.

  Modern-day Denmark has no England runestones at all, though there is one runestone in Scania, now the southernmost part of Sweden, that mentions London. That stone, DR 337, was found at Valleberga and now stands at what the source calls "runestone hill" in Lund.

  DR 6 in Schleswig Cathedral is a Swedish stone on German soil. Its ornamentation identifies it as the work of a Swede. The inscription commemorates a man who lay dead at a place recorded in Old Norse as Skía. Omeljan Pritsak suggests this was either Shoebury in Essex or Skidby in Yorkshire.

  The most geographically distant England runestone is E 2, sometimes called Br E2, which sits in Saint Paul's Cathedral in London itself. It dates to the early 11th century and is carved in Pr2, also called Ringerike style. The stone is limestone and retains traces of dark blue and red pigment. Scholars think it may have been placed in memory of a Viking warrior who died serving Canute the Great, and the creature carved on its surface may represent Sleipnir, the eight-legged horse of Odin. The stone is now held at the Museum of London.

  N 184 in Galteland, Aust-Agder, is the Norwegian representative of the group. It commemorates a son who died in service with the army of Canute the Great during his conquest of England.