Snottsta and Vreta stones

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Four carved stones in the Swedish province of Uppland, catalogued as U 329, U 330, U 331 and U 332, tell of a woman named Inga who outlived her husband and her children. They belong to the homesteads of Snottsta, also spelled Snåttsta, and Vreta. The texts are in Old Norse, written with the younger futhark, and they come from the 11th century. Together with the Hillersjö stone, U 29, and the runestone U 20/21, they preserve a family story that involves Inga and her mother Gerlög. Why would a widow commission a bridge, several stones and a staff for one man? Why does a professional warrior appear in a family memorial? And why does a monument for a dead husband spend words on his sisters? The answers all circle one question that mattered enormously to a farming family: who gets the land.

  1346

• 2. A Memorial Across the Estate

  ›

  U 329 stands beside a field along a dirt road. Inga raised it in memory of her husband Ragnfast, and it also names his two sisters, Gyríðr and Ástríðr.

  U 330 rises at the foot of a hill in the middle of a field. Its text says Inga had it made together with a bridge and with other stones. One of those was U 329, and the wording hints at further stones that may have disappeared. The memorial was therefore a whole set of works spread across the estate, not a single marker.

  U 331 is the odd one out. It is not a runestone at all but a flat rock with the inscription written onto its surface. Here Inga announces that her husband Ragnfast had died. Of all the stones in the group, this plain rock carries the sentence on which the family's legal position rests.

  134

• 3. The Only Heir

  ›

  Sigfast was the father of Ragnfast, and U 331 makes a pointed claim about him. It says that Ragnfast was the sole inheritor of the property at Snottsta after Sigfast.

  U 329 supplies the other half of the picture. It mentions Ragnfast's two sisters, Gyríðr and Ástríðr, and since Ragnfast was the only heir, those sisters did not inherit their father's estate. Their names may appear because of a disagreement over the inheritance. What is certain is that they are named to show how they were related to Inga.

  Among the three women, Inga was the one who in the end owned Snottsta. The stones were her way of putting that outcome on public view, beside the roads and fields that everyone passed.

  14

• 4. The Vanished Stone at Vreta

  ›

  The runestone at Vreta, U 332, no longer exists. Its inscription and its carved designs are known only because someone made a drawing of it in the 18th century.

  The text on that stone is the emotional centre of the group. Raised by Inga, it adds that both her husband Ragnfast and their children were dead, because she had inherited them. In plain terms, the line "she inherited her child" means the property of the dead passed to her.

  The Hillersjö stone, U 29, agrees with this. It says Inga inherited her son. He is not named, probably because he was very young when he died. The central message of the whole group is now clear: Inga inherited Snottsta after Ragnfast died.

  64

• 5. A Staff for Ragnfast

  ›

  The Vreta stone includes a detail that is easy to miss, since it states that a staff was raised in memory of Ragnfast. Staffs of this kind are rare enough that scholars can list the parallels. Other inscriptions that indicate a raised staff include Sö 196 in Kolsundet, Vs 1 in Stora Ryttern and U 226 in Bällsta. A fourth, U 849 in Balingsta, is now lost.

  The word needs care. On three more inscriptions, DR 40 in Randbøl, Sm 16 in Nöbbele and Sö 56 in Fyrby, the word "staff" may refer to the staves of the runes in the text rather than to a physical object. For Ragnfast, the stone suggests a real staff stood alongside the bridge and the carved stones.

  6

• 6. The Housecarl Assur

  ›

  U 330 adds a name that the family had no obvious need to include: Assurr, also written Özurr, the housecarl of Ragnfast. A housecarl was a professional warrior. The stone does not say why he matters, but it was probably meant to show visitors that Assurr was an important and valued person at the estate. He probably had rights of inheritance too.

  Scholars have tried to follow him beyond Snottsta. Assurr is identified with Andsvarr, a variant form of the same name, who was commemorated by his daughter Guðlaug on U 328. This Guðlaug may be the woman who raised the runestones U 133 and U 141 in memory of her son Holmi, who fell in Italy. If so, Holmi would have been the son of Assur.

  A man whom the estate honoured on a widow's memorial may therefore have had a son who died in a faraway campaign.

  35

• 7. Estrid and the Jarlabanke Clan

  ›

  The sister named Estrid on U 329 leads to one of the most powerful families in the region. She is probably the same Estrid who appears on several Jarlabanke Runestones in Täby and elsewhere. These include the Broby bro runestones, the Hargs bro runic inscriptions and Uppland Rune Inscriptions 101, 143 and 147.

  That Estrid was the maternal ancestor of a great clan, and the maternal grandmother of the Jarlabanke who claimed to own all of Täby. The inscription on U 329 has been attributed to a runemaster named Fot, who also made the stones for the Jarlabanke clan.

  This strongly suggests a life story. Estrid was born in Snottsta, married Östen of Täby, and married a second time in Harg, near Snottsta. The sister who lost the farm to her brother's widow may have gone on to found a dynasty.

  12

• 8. The Last Stone

  ›

  The stones in this group are classified as carved in the runestone style Pr3, which points to the period 1050-1080. The four stones of Snottsta and Vreta were carved first. The runestone U 20/21 came next, and the Hillersjö stone, U 29, was made last of all.

  Gerlög raised that final stone, and it closes the family saga. It tells that Inga had died without living children. The property then passed to her mother Gerlög, who lived on the island of Färingsö. After Ragnfast, Sigfast and the children, the land at Snottsta ended up in the hands of a grieving mother, on an island that appears nowhere else in these inscriptions.

  6