| The Rune Stones
| | The runes were the Scandinavians special written language, before the church introduced Latin script on parchment. There are examples of Nordic runes from the third century. These are found as engravements in different metal objects.
Around the 6th century they started to put up stones with runes.
Most of the Danish rune stones were carved in the Viking Age, the 10th century. I is probable it was the Harald Bluetooth´s magnates, who are behind these types of historic monuments. The king conquered the eastern part of Denmark with Scania and southern Halland in the 970´s and 980´s. This is why we date the rune stones to this period. |
The Scanian Rune Stones
There are many more rune stones in Scania than in Zealand. In spite of this there are only rune stones in bounded areas I Scania, all of them in direct or with close connection to the coast. The map shows how the rune stones are distributed from Ystad i the south east to Landskrona in the west. The coastal areas were the richest and most densly populated areas in all of Scandinavia. The rune stone can be seen as power symbols erected by those, who wanted to mark their suzerainty in the coastal areas.
Most of the Scanian rune stones are no longer placed at their original spot. Many have been found built into churches and church walls. Thus it is probable that they originally were places close to the churches. Ljunits and Herrestad´s districts between Trelleborg and Ystad are the areas in Scania, where the rune stones are most dense. The area along the Sound also has a large concentration of rune stones including the rivers Højeå, Løddeå and Saxåen, which al ends in the Sound.
On the Scanian rune stone maps you can see how well the occurrence of the rune stones corresponds with the areas where the medieval churches are the most dense. The landscape suggests that we are dealing with magnates and power. Five of the rune stones, all from the southern coast of Scania, mention ” thegnar ”, i.e. men, who have been close to the king, probably Harald Bluetooth. It is not improbable that they have been part of the king´s housecarls.
Rune Stones in Scania |
Dating
When was the rune stones of the Sound region erected? It is tempting to believe that rune stone have been erected over a period of time, but that is probably not the case. On the contrary they must have been erected within a limited period. And it is possibly the expansion and conquest of Scania between the years 974 and 980, which is the real reason for the erection of the rune stones.
I some of the Scanian rune stones there are special pictures, which form a connection. These pictures are “the great animal”, the masks and the ship pictures. The finest example of the great animal we find on Harald Bluetooth´s great rune stone in Jellinge. The Tullstorp stone in Scania is a wonderful example of this motive. That is also the case with the tall rune stone in the university library in Lund. The so-called ”mask pictures” probably shows the head of the great animal as seen from the front. The masks have been carved in a large part of the Scanian rune stones. Masks as well as animals are to be found in the rich grave from the years 969 - 970 in Mammen in Jutland. Harald´s Jellinge stone must also originate from this time. Thus it is not wrong to date the Scanian rune stones to the 970´s and the 980´s, i.e. to the time around Harald´s conquest of Scania. The rune stones were erected by Christians, by the way. Harald Bluetooth was the king, who introduced Christianity in Denmark.
The Rune Stone in Jelling | 
Rune Stones at Västra Strö |
Why Did They Erect Rune Stones?
There have been many different theories as to why rune stones were erected. Some think that they wanted to mark out the land of their families, others that the stones stand as memorials to persons etc. None of the theories, however, are very tenable, if you analyse the content of the texts. Only one or two of Scania´s rune stones mention landed property.
In view of the dating of the stones to the time around Harald Bluetooth´s conquest of eastern Denmark and Scania in the 970´s, it is possible to se a connection between the rune stones, early Christianity and the wish of magnates to manifest themselves, as some of the most important reasons for the erections of the stones.
The Relevance of Personal Names
No matter which rune stones you study, there is always an emphasizing of personal names. We are often told who erected the stone, to whom it is erected and sometimes who has carved it. The text on each rune stone contains at least two names. The scholar Sven Rosborn has noticed this fact and has put forth a theory that it was the personal names in combination with the Christian faith, which has been the standard for the creation of the rune stones.
The physical act, which converted a man from pagan to Christian, was the christening itself. God recognizes his herd through the christening and the naming. The name of the Christian thus symbolized the Christian faith. In the Christian faith the act of remembering and praying for the dead was important for the living as well as the dead. The great church leader and bishop in Constantinople, Chrysostom, spoke in the beginning of the 5th century of the preservation and remembrance of the names of the dead as the best way to help them through the so-called Purgatory. Purgatory was the stadium all dead had to pass before they were taken in by God´s grace.
Rune Stone at Sjörup Church |
Brotherhoods
In order to help the dead through Purgatory it was important that he was a part of the livings´ intercessory prayers. In the 7th century in Western Europe they started to form special Christian brotherhoods to preserve the memory of the dead through their Christian names. In the 9th and 10th century this cult around personal names culminated. The many monasteries of Europe became the basis of these teachings concerning the the solicitude for the dead and the preservation of personal names.
It was not just men of the church, but also secular persons, who joined these brotherhoods, which consisted of members of the higher social classes, men as well as women. With gifts for the various brotherhoods, the living members made sure that their personal names were remembered through the intercessory prayers after death. Such brotherhoods existed all over the Christian Europe. A man named Orc, for instance, started such a brotherhood to the glory of God and St. Peter in Abbotesbury in England. Orc was a good friend of the Danish Viking king Knud the Great, who died in the year 1035. The rules prescribed that each member at the death of another member was to donate a penny, so the name of the dead would be mentioned at the recurring prayers.
Christening and Death Books
The Nordic missionaries came from monasteries in Northern Europe. For theses preachers the doctrine of the christening and the Christian soul after death must have been the most spectacular part of the conversion process. The common denominator was the personal name given at the christening, the name they could refer to in order to relieve the suffering of purgatory.
By erecting a rune stone and carefully give the name of the dead and those who had helped creating the stone; they did a good Christian deed. Thus the act of erecting a rune stone must have been a precursor of the later custom, where more prominent persons were entered into so-called obituaries of death books in the cathedrals. When one of the Christian benefactors died, his name and day of death were entered into a special book. Every day all year round Mass was said for those, who had died on the specific day. Such a death book, the so-called Necrologium Lundense, seems to have been introduced as early as the 1080´s in Lund´s Cathedral.
Necrologium Lundense |
The Fate of the Stones
Many of the rune stones were reused in the early 12th centuries as building material in the oldest stone churches. This may seem as rather illogical act in view of the fact that the rune stone a few generations earlier had been erected by the magnates of the districts. It is likely that the memory of the dead and the family still was alive. To destroy the memorial stones at this time does not seem logical, but perhaps it was not that brutal an act, as one might surmise. By using the Christian rune stones as building material in the new church the stones with their carved in Christian names ended up in their rightful place, so to speak, where they indirectly could be embraced by the daily Soul Masses of the church life.
Rune Stone at Sjörup Church | 
The Hunnestad Monument | 
The Hunnestad Monument with Great Animal |
Pictures and Runes
Some Danish rune stones have pictures of ”the great animal”, masks and ships. We may have expected that there would be many pictures of ships, as the Viking ships were the basis for the enormous expansion of the period. However, this is not the case. In Denmark there is only ships in 4% of the rune stones, in Norway 2% and in Sweden only 0,7%. The ship pictures, incidentally, do not even represent Viking ships. The ships have strong so-called pile drivers forward and astern.
The three motives occur in very few places. As to the ships´ pictures we will use the ship on the Tullstorp stone as an example. The ship´s plank is high, which is not common for the Viking ships. It has two pile drivers, which makes it clear that it is not a Viking ship. A pile driver is used to torpedo an enemy ship at considerable force. This demands heavy, slow ships, which can give sufficient force. The Viking ships were not constructed to do this. Nevertheless, all the ships on the rune stones have these pile drivers. What did they want to tell us with these pictures? Where were these ships to be found? At the emperor in Constantinople!
Tullstorp´s Churchyard |
The Emperor´s Warriors
The emperor had a large number of Vikings, or Vaerings in his service in the 8th century, where the eastern Roman armies gradually began to regain their power over the Mediterranean. The oldest war ships were further developed. First and foremost the ships were equipped with more decks with rowers. The ships, which were known under the name ”dromons” became the symbol of the increasing power of the eastern Roman power. A dromon was a galley with rowers in two decks i each side, no less than 25 oars per side, thus making one hundred rowers. There were at least three different dromons. The smallest was called Ousiakoi and was a ship meant for one hundred men. The lowest team of rowers only rowed, while the upper team also participated in close combat. The Pamphyloi type had a crew of 120-160 men and the third type, the real dromon, had 200 men distributed on 50 on the lower thwarts, 100 on the upper and 50 sea warriors.
A dromon had a plank along both rails and one in the middle axis of the ship. The rails were covered with round shields. The oars were put through the holes in the ship’s side and the rowers had no support for their oars. The dromons were equipped with heavy pile drivers and had catapults and ramps for the firing of the dreaded “Greek fire”, i.e. a kind of flame thrower. Forward and astern were decorated with double, upwards turned animal ornaments. A coin type from the time of Emperor Nicephorus (1078-1081) depicts a Byzantine ship with an animal head in the stem. Similar animals’ heads are also found in a Greek manuscript dating back to the 9th century.
Connections North
The descriptions fully correspond to the ship pictures on the rune stones. As “the great animal” are among these pictures, this may signify a connection to the eastern Roman emperor? The emperor´s throne, which the Vaerings guarded, was also guarded by a magnificent metal lion, constructed so it could move its head and tail and roar, probably some sort of steam machine. The great animal became a symbol of Harald Bluetooth and it is not hard to imagine, from where he got his symbol. |