Östergötland Runic Inscription 43 or Ög 43 is the

Rundata The Scandinavian Runic-text Database () is a project involving the creation and maintenance of a database of transliterated runic inscriptions. The project's goal is to comprehensively catalog runestones in a machine-readable way for future resea ...

catalog number for a

Viking Age The Viking Age (about ) was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonising, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America. The Viking Age applies not only to their ...

runic inscription A runic inscription is an inscription made in one of the various runic alphabets. They generally contained practical information or memorials instead of magic or mythic stories. The body of runic inscriptions falls into the three categories of E ...

carved on a rockface in Ingelstad, just north of

Norrköping Norrköping ( , ) is a city in the province of Östergötland in eastern Sweden and the seat of Norrköping Municipality, Östergötland County, about 160 km southwest of the national capital Stockholm, 40 km east of county seat Lin ...

Östergötland Östergötland (; English exonym: East Gothland) is one of the traditional provinces of Sweden (''landskap'' in Swedish) in the south of Sweden. It borders Småland, Västergötland, Närke, Södermanland and the Baltic Sea. In older English li ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

Description

Ög 43 is carved on a granite rockface consisting of two lines of text within runic text bars that are approximately 0.4 meters in length. Above it is carved a sword, and a cross and Nordic

sun symbol A solar symbol is a symbol representing the Sun. Common solar symbols include circles (with or without rays), crosses, and spirals. In religious iconography, personifications of the Sun or solar attributes are often indicated by means of a halo o ...

are also carved nearby. The runic text is in the younger futhark except for the first rune in the second line, which uses the form of the d-rune, Runic letter dagaz

, from the

elder futhark The Elder Futhark (or Fuþark, ), also known as the Older Futhark, Old Futhark, or Germanic Futhark, is the oldest form of the runic alphabets. It was a writing system used by Germanic peoples for Northwest Germanic dialects in the Migration Per ...

. p. 451. The

Rök runestone The Rök runestone (; Rundata, Ög 136) is one of the most famous runestones, featuring the longest known runic alphabet, runic inscription in stone. It can now be seen beside the church in Rök, Ödeshög Municipality, Östergötland, Sweden. I ...

, dated to this same period, also mixes runes from both futharks in its inscription. Because of this, it has been dated to approximately 850 C.E. The association of the carving of a sun with the word ''sól'' along with the use of an anachronistic d-rune may suggest it is a ritualistic comparison of the dim winter sun and the bright summer sun, and represents a

runic magic There is some evidence that, in addition to being a writing system, runes historically served purposes of magic. This is the case from the earliest epigraphic evidence of the Roman to the Germanic Iron Age, with non-linguistic inscriptions and ...

call for the sun to shine. The d-rune of the second line has been transcribed into

Old Norse Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants ...

as an

ideographic rune Ideographic runes (, , 'term/notion runes') are runes used as ideographs instead of regular letters, that is, instead of representing their phoneme or syllable, they represent their name as a word or term. Such instances are sometimes referred to b ...

that uses the name for this rune, which means "day," as the personal name Dagr. This name also appears spelled out in the runic texts on inscriptions Vg 101 in Bragnum and Vg 113 in Lärkegapet, and

Dagr Dagr (Old Norse 'day')Lindow (2001:91). is the divine personification of the day in Norse mythology. He appears in the ''Poetic Edda'', compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the ''Prose Edda'', written in the 13th cen ...

is also the personification of day in

Norse mythology Norse, Nordic, or Scandinavian mythology, is the body of myths belonging to the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia as the Nordic folklore of the modern period. The ...

Inscription

Latin transliteration

:÷ salsi karþi sul ÷ D ÷ skut- - þ--a hiu ×Project Samnordisk Runtextdatabas Svensk
-

entry for Ög 43.

Old Norse transcription

:''Sôlsi gerði sól. Dagr(?) skút (?) í(?)þ tt(?) hjó.''

English translation

:Sôlsi(?) made(?) the sun(?). Dagr(?) cut(?) this(?) on the cliff-face.

Gallery

File:Ög 43, runsten i Ingelstad, Östra Eneby socken, den 11 juli 2007, bild 6.jpg, Detail showing the sword above the text. File:Ög 43, runsten i Ingelstad, Östra Eneby socken, den 11 juli 2007, bild 7.jpg, Detail showing the nearby cross. File:Ög 43, runsten i Ingelstad, Östra Eneby socken, den 11 juli 2007, bild 8.jpg, Detail showing the nearby sun. File:Ög 43, runsten i Ingelstad, Östra Eneby socken, den 11 juli 2007, bild 9.JPG, Roadsign pointing to the inscription.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ostergotland Runic Inscription 043 Runestones in Östergötland 9th-century inscriptions Runic inscriptions with ideographic runes