Viking runestones

• 1. Introduction

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  Viking runestones are stone inscriptions carved in Old Norse that record the names of Scandinavians who sailed west and fought in foreign lands. They raise an immediate question: who exactly were these men, and how far did their voyages reach? Sweden alone holds between 1,700 and 2,500 runestones depending on how you count them, and a striking concentration of those stones sits in a single district. The inscriptions were all cut in the Younger Futhark, the runic alphabet in use during the Viking Age. Denmark accounts for around 250 stones, Norway for around 50, and Iceland for none at all. Not every stone commemorates a raider. Scholars are careful to note that not all of the men remembered on these stones necessarily took part in pillaging. The questions the stones leave open are as interesting as the facts they record: Who was the warrior known only as "Spear"? What royal guards were Scandinavian warriors keeping in England? And what can a handful of coins buried near a stone in Södermanland tell us about the reach of Viking service?

• 2. The Warrior Called Spear

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  Kjula Runestone, designated Sö 106, stands at the old road between Eskilstuna and Strängnäs in Södermanland, Sweden, at a place that also served as the site of the local assembly. The stone is carved in runestone style Pr1 and preserves a poem in the Old Norse metre fornyrðislag about a man called Spjót, meaning "Spear." The verse records that he had been in the west, broken down and fought in townships, and knew all the journey's fortresses. Scandinavian scholars including Sophus Bugge, Erik Brate, and Elias Wessén have discussed at length just how extensive the warfare of Spjót could have been. His name is unique in the runestone record, and the scholars who have studied it suggest it may have been a name he earned as a warrior rather than one he was given at birth. The stone uses the term vestarla for "in the west" without naming any specific location, a deliberate or conventional vagueness that four other Viking runestones share: Sö 137, Sö 164, Sö 173, and Sm 51. The Kjula Runestone is believed to have been raised by the same aristocratic family responsible for the Ramsund carving nearby and the Bro Runestone in Uppland, suggesting the stone commemorates a man tied to one of the more powerful clans of the region.

• 3. Elite Guards and Royal Service

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  U 668, found in Kolsta in Uppland, spent roughly a century lost before being rediscovered in the mid-19th century. In the 17th century, one of Johannes Bureus' assistants found it built into the wall of a manor house. When it was finally recovered, the stone turned out to carry an exceptional inscription: it was raised in memory of a member of the Þingalið, the personal guard of the Dano-English kings. This elite unit was composed mostly of Scandinavian warriors and existed between 1016 and 1066. A second runestone commemorating a man who died in the same unit is the Råby Runestone in Södermanland. The runestone Sm 42, located in Tuna in Småland, tells of a man named Özurr who served as a skipari, or "seaman," on the longship of a king named Harald, probably the English king Harold Harefoot. Serving in this capacity was considered a great honour, placing the man within the king's retinue, the þingalið. A local tradition held that ancient coins were found near the Sm 42 stone, and these may have been Özur's payment from his service in England. The inscription on Sm 42 is notable for a technical reason as well: the runemaster used a bind rune to combine the s-rune and the k-rune in the word skipari.

• 4. Coins, Hoards, and Anglo-Saxon Connections

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  At Södra Beteby in Södermanland, the runestone Sö 260 was found alongside a hoard of several hundred English coins. More Anglo-Saxon pennies of this period have been found in Sweden than in England, a direct consequence of the Danegelds paid by the English to Viking forces. Scholar Omeljan Pritsak has argued that the Hakon named on Sö 260 is the same man mentioned on the Bro Runestone, whose son Ulf was in England, and that this Swedish Hakon Jarl may actually be the Norwegian Hákon Eiríksson. The runestone Sö 14, found at the church of Gåsinge, was raised by two women in memory of their husband and father, who took part in an expedition in the west, possibly alongside Canute the Great. The runestone Ög 111, set into the wall of the church of Landeryd in Östergötland, records that a man had served directly under Canute the Great. Erik Brate identifies the man named Væringr who raised Ög 111 as the same Væringr who appears on runestone Ög 68, which remembers a man named Kyela who died while on a westward expedition under that same chieftain.

• 5. Runestone Styles and Craft

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  Each runestone belongs to a recognized style classification that reflects how its text bands and decorative heads were carved. Style RAK, considered the oldest, uses runic text bands with straight ends and no attached animal heads. At the other extreme, Urnes style, sometimes called Pr4, ends the text bands in serpent or beast heads shown in profile, with elongated and highly stylized creatures. Ringerike style, or Pr1, also shows serpent heads in profile but with less elongation than Urnes. Style Fp depicts attached serpent or beast heads as seen from above rather than in profile. The runestone Sö 173 in the village of Tystberga is one of only two known runestones, the other being U 802, whose decoration contains runic animal heads rendered in both bird perspective (Fp) and profile perspective (Pr), a combination rare enough to attract scholarly notice. The runestone Sö 164, located at Spånga, is the only known stone with both text and iconography referring to a ship; its ornamentation shows a vessel whose mast takes the form of an artful cross. It also uses cipher runes made from both short-twig runes and staveless runes alongside ordinary long-branch runes, and the inscription is attributed to a runemaster named Traen.

• 6. Lost Stones and Recovered Histories

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  Several of the Viking runestones no longer exist in their original locations or have vanished entirely. U 349, documented at Odenslunda during the Swedish runestone surveys of the 17th century, has since disappeared. U 363, a boulder at Gådersta, also vanished. Sö 53, recorded during the 17th century surveys as being in Valstad, was partly recovered from a wall of a shed and from beneath a cottage before the courtyard where it had been found was destroyed in 1880; the stone is now considered lost. Sö 173 in Tystberga has a more involved history. The location was first described by Lukas Gadd during the nationwide revision of prehistoric monuments in the 17th century. He found a flat stone with runes, another leaning stone, a large square stone surrounded by smaller stones, and two passage graves about 20 paces long nearby. A 17th century drawing of the stone, made by Johan Hadorph and Johan Peringskiöld, has since helped scholars reconstruct damaged sections. Richard Dybeck raised the stone anew in 1864. In 1936, Ivar Schnell examined the site and found that a large stone nearby, when lifted, turned out to be another runestone, probably the square stone Gadd had described. Because the stones were interfering with agriculture, all three were re-erected at a new position 60 metres away, along the side of the road. The stone circle and other monuments Gadd had recorded could no longer be found.

• 7. Memory, Names, and the Shape of an Inscription

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  Runestones were erected by people to preserve specific names against forgetting, but the inscriptions sometimes create puzzles for later readers. On Sö 173, the name element rendered by the runes mani can be read either as Máni, the moon, or as the male name Manni derived from maðr, the Old Norse word for "man." The runes mus:kia present a harder challenge. An older reading that identified the name as Mus-Gea has been rejected by modern scholars. The current interpretation treats the element as a nominalization of myskia, meaning "to darken" as happens at sunset, and one scholar has proposed it could refer to twilight or even a hair colour. A second theory links the name to the animal bat. Whether the name belongs to a man or a woman remains disputed, though most scholars favour the female reading. The name Myskia appears once more in runestone Sö 13 from Gatstugan, and it may record the same individual. The inscription itself reinforces these name choices aesthetically: the m-runes from the sponsors' names are echoed in the shape of the tongues of the two serpents carved on the stone. The runestone G 370 at Hablingbo Church on Gotland, discovered in 1988 during excavation for a grave, carries an inscription considered an early use of the plural form of the word Vikings in Sweden, a usage also found on U 617 at Bro and on Danish runestone DR 216.