Friday, April 20, 2018

Viking Era Runestone

Viking Era Runestone
A 1,000 year old runestone that once stood at the long gone village of Blista, not far from Alvsta in Haninge. There's an old painting of the runestone dating back 400 years, and the top right corner of the stone was already missing back then. Today the stone stands close to Årsta castle in Österhaninge. It has been there since around 1864 when Gustav Upmark pieced the stone together. At that time the stone had been missing for hundreds of years and when it was found it was broken in several pieces. It is 263 centimetres high and 146 centimetres wide. The inscription reads: Sven had this stone made...(a few words are missing here) ...his good father and for Gudvar. The inscription was made by Halvdan. It means that Sven raised the stone in memory of his parents.

4 comments:

RedPat said...

These are amazing!

William Kendall said...

Impressive!

Lowell said...

So you're saying that over a period of a 1000 years, this stone has been vandalized to the extent that a few pieces are missing. That's quite incredible. It Miami, it wouldn't have lasted 1 day before the vandals destroyed it.

Stefan Jansson said...

Many of the runestones in my area have been forgotten about during that long era. They were sometimes used in church walls and what have you before being discovered again a few hundred years ago.