The king shot an arrow - a runic inscription from Sogndal, Norway

 

Last weekend, I made a roadtrip through parts of Sogn, a district that covers both the northern and southern shores and inlands of Sognefjorden, the largest fjord in mainland Norway. This is an area which contains a lot of historical survivals that are of great interest to a medievalist, and in some upcoming blogposts I will write about some of the many medieval monuments encountered along the way. 

The first example is a rune stone from Sogndal, which currently is housed in a glass case. We do not know when the stone was first erected, and what it was meant to commemorate. The inscription is known by its ID number N 386, and a transcription and a translation into English can be found here. It is dated to around 1100, and reads "King Olaf shot between these stones". The text indicates that there once stood a second standing stone in the area, but this is now lost. 

The text does not give any indication of which king is referenced. By c.1100, there had been three kings of Norway named Olaf. Closest in time to the inscription is Olaf III (r.1067-93), whereas Olaf II (r.1015-28) and Olaf I (r.995-1000) had long since become legendary figures about whom many stories were told. Olaf II had also been recognised as a saint since 1031, the year after his death at the Battle of Stiklestad. 

The reference to a shot - presumably with an arrow - is difficult to explain. One hypothesis is that the king shot an arrow in order to decide on a place where a church should be built. The rune stone - or rather, the standing stone with a runic inscription added later - stands close to the location of Stedje Church, a nineteenth-century replacement for the stave church that stood on the same spot in the Middle Ages. Decisions being left to divine intervention or fate such as this one are a typical motif of folktales and medieval hagiography alike. Since both Olaf I and Olaf II were regarded as missionary kings, stories about the founding of churches were often attributed to them. 

What is particularly important about the runic inscription, however, is not whether it refers to the founding of a church or whether it has a different meaning. Rather, the inscription shows that already by c.1100, stories that connected famous but departed kings to a specific locality were already in circulation close to a century after the oldest of the three possible candidates. The story might have been based on old oral accounts, perhaps even an actual historical event, but decades - perhaps an entire century - had passed before someone saw the need to commit this story to writing. As a medium for this message, the carver decided to use an old standing stone that was central to the story, but which had not been erected for the sake of carrying the kind of monumental memorialisation that is typical for rune stones. In short, the inscription provides a glimpse into the evolution of stories that grow and develop outside centralised, authoritative text production, which by c.1100 was mainly overseen by ecclesiastical and monastic groups.  

The person carving these runes might have remembered Olaf III, and it is possible that it was this king who ordered a church to be founded. After all, new churches were built by both secular and ecclesiastical agents throughout the eleventh and the twelfth centuries. However, it is likely that the kind of church-building story most likely to be committed to written memory would concern a church erected in the early Christianisation period, i.e. during the reign of either Olaf I or Olaf II. If so, this would be an event taking place long before the carver of the runes had been born. In this case, the inscription shows the pull of stories, and how these stories - and perhaps also their implication for local identity - excite people and move them to become keepers of memory in one way or another. In this instance, by carving runes on an old menhir.

All in all, we can only speculate about the origins of this runic inscription. Its content suggests to us the importance of history and the desire to commemorate the past. Seen in the context of other written records from eleventh and twelfth-century Norway, we might understand this as a part of a growing concern with fastening history to the material world in order to preserve it for future generations. The inscription is, in other words, a testament to the importance of stories.  

The Stedje stone looking towards Stedje Church

The Växjö rune stone

This evening, I have returned from a short trip to Växjö in Sweden, where I attended the launch of the Mapping Saints database, which contains descriptions and overviews of the various sources of the cult of saints in medieval Sweden. The project behind this database - Mapping Lived Religion - has been headed by Sara Ellis Nilsson, and I was fortunate enough to work as a part of the team for three months back in 2021. It was lovely to mark the conclusion to this enterprise. Yesterday morning, before the launch itself a friend and I headed into town, where I wanted to visit the cathedral. This was my first time in Växjö since I left the city in December 2020, and I was happy to see both the church and the rune stone again.  

The rune stone is located behind the east wall of the cathedral, and was found during renovations in the church building in 1813. According to the information plaque next to it, the stone has been dated to c.1000, but I will add that I myself do not know enough about rune stones to have an opinion on this issue. On the plaque, the text has been translated into Swedish and English, and the latter runs accordingly: 'Tyke - Tyke Viking - erected this stone in memory of Gunnar, Grim's son. May God help his soul'.   

The Växjö rune stone

 

The early date of the stone is intriguing, because it suggests that Växjö was a Christian centre several decades before the first Swedish bishop was consecrated - which was bishop Adalvard of Sigtuna around 1060, if we believe Adam of Bremen. If the date is correct, therefore, the stone is a testament to the slow and decentralised spread of Christianity in Sweden, especially since there was no Swedish church organisation at such an early point in time. In light of such a lack of an organisational infrastructure and framework, it is important, however, that we reflect on what it means to constitute a centre in this part of the Christianisation process. Centrality is relative, and the Christian community in Växjö around the year 1000 is likely to have been small. We should imagine that it consisted of a few locals, perhaps a significant percentage of whom were slaves, and that the religious life was headed by a missionary, either from England or from Germany, as these were the two main centres of active influence in the Nordic Christianisation. Moreover, we should expect that the community was protected by a local aristocrat, on whose farmstead important services were held, such as baptism, funerals, and the celebration of the main liturgical feasts.  

The durability of the Christian community was dependent on its relationship with locals. The protection of the local noble could be revoked, or indeed be insufficient in the face of a strong reaction from the pagan majority. For this reason, when we talk about Växjö as a Christian centre, this centrality does not necessarily mean that the community was deeply rooted or secure against changing attitudes. Centres can, and often are, short lived, and the testimony of the rune stone should not lead us to think that Christianity was stronger in Växjö than it actually was.  

The likely existence of a small but seemingly vibrant Christian centre around 1000, is especially interesting in light of a later legend that emerged in Växjö, namely that of Saint Sigfrid. I have recounted the legend in a previous blogpost, but a brief summary is necessary for the present purpose. Växjö became a diocese in the second half of the twelfth century, following the establishment of the Uppsala church province in 1164. At some point, the cathedral clergy at Växjö began venerating the figure of Sigfrid, who became the centre-point for the cathedral's institutional identity. The earliest surviving version of his legend - as far as I know - is contained in the liturgical office, composed towards the end of the thirteenth century. Here we learn about the English missionary and his three nephews who established a Christian centre in Växjö. Eventually, however, local opinion turned, and when Sigfrid was away visiting the king, his three nephews were killed. Their heads were found in a tub floating on Lake Växjö, and the local populace repented. 

Much is dubious about this story, in part because it makes a late appearance in the source material. We should also note that the name Sigfrid is essentially the same as Sigafrid, a missionary whom King Olaf II Haraldsson of Norway - later Saint Olaf - brought with him from England to Norway in 1016, at least according to Adam of Bremen's Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesie Pontifici from the 1070s. Sigafrid is known in later Norwegian sources as Sigurd, and is often identified as the first Norwegian bishop. As the story of Saint Olaf was well known in the rest of the Nordic sphere, it could easily become a reference point or an inspiration for other cults. For instance, the early-twelfth-century legend of Saint Theodegarius in Northern Denmark identified Theodegarius as one of Saint Olaf's missionaries (although that name is not mentioned by Adam). It is entirely possible that the figure of Saint Sigfrid is partly connected to the legend of Saint Olaf, if only through the name of the Norwegian bishop.  

Despite the many dubious elements of the Sigfrid legend, the Växjö rune stone does invite a very important question, namely whether this legend could contain some kernel of truth, such as a very faint echo of actual events from the slow spread of Christianity in Sweden around the turn of the millennium. We will, of course, never know, and we are unable to venture beyond the labyrinth of accrued stories and later additions that comprise the Sigfrid legend. Nonetheless, what we can surmise is that there was Christian activity in Växjö around the year 1000, and this activity endured for some time. We do not know how long, but we can assume that a man who had been spending part of his life abroad as a pirate had gone to the deep Swedish woods - presumably returning to his ancestral region - and there erected a monument in memory of a fellow Christian. This interpretation is not the only possible one, of course. The fates and lives of eleventh-century people could twist and turn in unexpected ways - ways unimaginable to us today, so the historical stories of Tyke and Gunnar might have unfolded very differently from how I imagine them here. Even so, this rune stone is a Christian monument, and a monument is a costly, time-consuming matter, which in turn suggests that there was enough stability and a sufficiently sizeable Christian population in Växjö that the monument was allowed to be erected, and that the monument stood for some time. This rune stone, then, is a anchoring point in time, that allows us to think more carefully about later legends, and about the complexities of eleventh-century history.      

Technologies of memory - border markers in stone, then and now

 
Following the discovery of the Svingerud stone - labelled the oldest datable rune stone - my own fascination with runes has increased significantly, and I am using this opportunity to reflect more on the role of runes and their significance for medieval literacy and medieval cultures of memory - meaning the cultural structures that facilitated the maintenance, dissemination and even construction and forgery of memory. Due to the durability of their medium and the notable continuity in legibility, runic inscriptions are particularly fascinating, and serve to remind us of the nebulous spectrum of literacy, wherein written messages can be accessible to a much wider audience than we often expect.  

Since rune stones are technologies of memory, and vehicles for the maintenance of information and knowledge, they perform this duty to memory in many different ways. Some stones are commemorative, serving to remind future generations of individuals or of great deeds, or a combination of both. Other stones are more pragmatic in function, yet also important. One example of this latter type is the Nørstebø rune stone (c.1050-c.1100) from Oppland in Eastern Norway (Nørstebø means "northernmost field" in Norwegian). The stone is placed by the entrance of the humanties library of the University of Oslo. One of the many perks of visiting this library is to pass by this and two other rune stones, presented to the public as books in stone, a very apt metaphor. 

The Nørstebø rune stone is particularly interesting to me because of how it reminds us of the durability and longevity of certain technologies of memory. The inscription of the stone records, in James Knirk's translation, that "Finnr and Skopti put up this stone when they divided their land, Váli's sons". In other words, the stone is a border marker that serves to remind future generations where one property ends and the other begins.   

This kind of stone marker is a physical proof of the historical agreement that shaped the landscape for later generations, a kind of security against the future failing memory of individuals, and the loss of oral transmission of the event. Because of their tangibility as forms of evidence, border markers in stone remained an important technology of memory also in later centuries. In my own native village, Hyen, located in the Western Norwegian fjords, we often encounter such border markers in stone. Indeed, there is one right outside the kitchen window in my childhood home, and they can also be found in the middle of the woods. The border markers - known as "merkesteinar", marking stones - do not carry any inscriptions, with possible and very sporadic exceptions. They are significantly younger than the Nørstebø stone, and the ones we encounter in the woods back home are probably not older than a couple of hundred years at the most. 

The lack of inscriptions on these modern border markers from Hyen are interesting, because they remind us of how technologies of memory have changed. When the Nørstebø stone was set into the ground, there was no central store of memory, no archive or library which could provide confirmation about the ownership of land and of the significance of the stone. With the combination of more widespread literacy - although the runic inscription also points to a significant degree of literacy - and the centralisation of memory in the administrative expansion of the modern era, it was no longer necessary to write on these border markers. The stones were important because they provided physical, tangible evidence of an agreement concerning property, but the details concerning that agreement - names, price of the transaction, duration of the agreement and similar issues - are housed elsewhere, in a central archive. In other words, the modern border markers found in my native village exist in a memory culture wherein memory is sustained by other forms of technologies of memory, namely written documents stored in a centralised archive. Some aspects of memory culture expressed through the Nørstebø stone are thereby retained, while other aspects are replaced with other technologies. 

The combination of change and continuity is in and of itself not surprising, but we do well to remember that certain technologies are perfected at a very early stage, and continue to be used even though there are other ways to perform the tasks that these technologies were made to perform.   

The Nørstebø stone, University of Oslo, humanities library

The Svingerud stone - the world's oldest dateable rune stone

 

Yesterday I went to the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo to buy a book, and also to check whether the world's oldest dateable rune had already been put on display. To my luck, this proved to be the case, and I was able to have my first encounter with the recently-excavated Svingerud stone. 

News of this find broke on January 17, when the museum publicised that excavations in Ringerike had yielded a rune stone found in layers from the first two centuries of the common era. The excavations were carried out in 2021, and for the past years runologists, linguists and archaeologists have examined and interpreted the stone and its several inscriptions. Runologist Kristel Zilmer provided a thorough and fascinating overview of the research process in a thread of tweets (in English), and another overview (in both English and Norwegian) was published on the website of the University of Oslo. A description of the exhibition is found on the museum's website.

The main inscription reads "idiberug", which is interpreted to be a woman's name, although the date of the inscription and the lack of comparable sources mean that is impossible to speak in certainties on this matter. The Svingerud stone - named after the location where it was found - also contains other human-made markings, but these are more difficult to interpret.  

idiberug

The exhibition is located in one of the smallest rooms in the museum's third floor, and it only contains the stone in its two fragments, a poster, and a video running on a loop. The video can also be seen on the museum's website. The smallness of the room is perfect for an exhibition of this kind, and as I entered I could note the excitement among the visitors gathered around the glass case, visitors ranging from around eight to around eighty. A member of staff was on site to answer questions, and as I stood and took it all in, I noted how several of the visitors turned to the guide or talked among themselves, both in Norwegian and in English. (It was especially heartening to learn that an American and his grandchild just happened to be in Oslo in time for the exhibition and had taken the opportunity to go.)  

It was a marvellously joyous occasion, as the buzz in the room was an almost tangible reminder of how much fascination and interest can be found among the members of the public, and how valuable such exhibitions are since they provide both an outlet and a focal point for this enthusiasm. I walked about the room taking photographs, listening to the video and the guide, and seeing the stone from various angles while letting other visitors close to the exhibition case as well. I was smiling stupidly behind my face mask, because I was reminded yet again how much interest people have in the past, and how energising that interest can be.  

The coming years will be very exciting, and I look forward to read the studies coming out from the team working on the Svingerud stone. We are presented with a chance to learn more about a part of Norway's history about which very little is known, and we are able to put our existing knowledge in a much wider context. The fact that this stone pushes the date for the carving of runes in what came to be Norway even further back in time means that we have to expand our chronological frame when thinking about the historical development of this geography. We - scholars, members of the public, the world at large - have an opportunity to learn and broaden our horizon, and this is in and of itself wonderful. 

The joy, the immense joy, in all of this is nonetheless tinged with some bitterness. While new finds are emerging from excavations and studies, while we have a large number of experts in relevant fields, and while we have an unprecedented level of knowledge about conservation, excavation, locating and interpreting the new materials that are found throughout Norway, we are also living in a time when jobs in the relevant fields are cut, funding is reduced, and money and monetisability remain the guiding stars for the people in charge. As a consequence, we are squandering our opportunities to make the most of the combination of expertise and materials, of enthusiasm and a public that is open to the news and the knowledge concerning these finds. I can only hope that we are slowly able to turn this trend and ensure that the requisite research is being done.