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Runestones explain a person’s social position. She is also one of the earliest known Swedish Christians. Estrid Sigfastsdotter, a rich and powerful woman who lived between 10 north of modern-day Stockholm, raised several runestones in her own name in commemoration of her husbands and sons. We know they made their own decisions and controlled their personal wealth because women commissioned runestones, which was a big and expensive undertaking.

Viking Age Scandinavia was a man’s society, but women could speak for themselves. Women could-and did-commission runestones. Since the stones were mainly expressions of Christian faith, scholars theorize that the large number in Sweden is evidence of the conflict between the old religion and the new.

Medieval texts tend to focus on Vikings from Denmark, Norway, and Iceland, yet most known runestones are located in Sweden. Lundberg, Swedish National Heritage Board // CC BY 2.5 SE More than 2500 Viking runestones can be found in Sweden.īengt A. The reduced number of letters made for efficient rune carving, but one downside for modern scholars is that a single symbol can represent several different sounds, so translation of the runestones' messages can be difficult. Runestones use a later version, the Younger Futhark, containing 16 symbols derived from the 24-letter Older Futhark. Viking Age Scandinavia’s runic alphabet, the Futhark, is named after its first six symbols ( f, u, th, a, r, and k). The runestones were carved using the Futhark. In the traditional Swedish province of Södermanland, a runestone is raised over the two brothers Håsten and Holmsten with text written in fornyrðislag, a poetic meter using an intricate rhyming pattern based on alliteration. Some runestones follow this formula in verse. They followed a strict formula: the name of the commissioner, the name of the deceased, what this person achieved in life, a prayer, and the name of the rune carver.

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The runestones demonstrate, however, that there was a literary culture with professional rune carvers who chiseled short, poignant messages in stone. Viking Age society was a predominantly oral society important decisions were made by word of mouth rather than in writing. More runestones are decorated with crosses and invoke the names of God, Jesus, and the Virgin Mary than the pagan gods of Norse mythology. Those who converted to Christianity raised runestones to declare their faith in the face of their pagan neighbors. In pop culture, Vikings are depicted as pagans, but the Viking Age was really an age of transition when Scandinavia went from paganism to Christianity. Most Viking runestones are Christian rather than pagan. The stone is dedicated to one of the sons, Torgärd’s maternal uncle, Assur, whose life ended in the Byzantine Empire (now modern-day Greece and Turkey). Torgärd’s stone mentions that the farmer Gulle had five sons and lists how each of them died a violent death. Sometime between 10, a woman named Torgärd raised a runestone near the village of Högby in the region of Östergötland (now in southern Sweden). Instead, they commemorate people who were deceased. Runestones often mention people who have died, but they were never raised next to a grave. Runestones were raised along waterways and property boundaries, by road intersections, and on hilltops so people could find and read them. Viking runestones were meant to be seen.ĭuring the Viking Age (800-1050 CE), runestones were often painted and the carved lettering filled in with bright colors. Here are some more surprising facts about Viking runestones. Today, about 3000 of these 1000-year-old stones can be found all over Scandinavia and the British Isles, and new ones continue to be discovered. The Jelling Stone set off a craze for runestones that lasted throughout the 11th century, and into the 12th century in some places.

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They became fashionable after Danish king Harold Bluetooth raised one-known as the Jelling Stone-to commemorate his parents, the late Danish king Gorm the Old and his wife, Tyra, sometime between 960 and 985 CE. Runestones are upright slabs of stone displaying messages carved in runes. There is a way for us to hear the Vikings speak for themselves: by reading messages carved on runestones. Most of what we know about the Vikings, however, are exaggerations written by people who encountered them. The word evokes ferocious warriors, swords, battleaxes, and bloodthirsty raids.

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