Gästrikland Runic Inscription 13 or Gs 13 is a

runestone A runestone is typically a raised stone with a runic inscription, but the term can also be applied to inscriptions on boulders and on bedrock. The tradition began in the 4th century and lasted into the 12th century, but most of the runestones da ...

carved on red

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) ...

located in a church in

Gävle Gävle () is a city in Sweden, the seat of Gävle Municipality and the capital of Gävleborg County. It had 77,586 inhabitants in 2020, which makes it the 13th most populated city in Sweden. It is the oldest city in the historical Norrland (Swede ...

Gästrikland Gästrikland () is a historical province or ''landskap'' on the eastern coast of Sweden. It borders Uppland, Västmanland, Dalarna, Hälsingland and the Gulf of Bothnia. Gästrikland is the southernmost of the Norrland provinces. Other forms of ...

. It was carved in the 11th century by the

runemaster A runemaster or runecarver is a specialist in making runestones. Description More than 100 names of runemasters are known from Viking Age Sweden with most of them from 11th-century eastern Svealand.The article ''Runristare'' in ''Nationalencyklo ...

Åsmund Kåresson Åsmund Kåresson was a Viking Age runemaster who flourished during the first half of the 11th century in Uppland and Gästrikland, Sweden. The early Urnes style is represented in his art. pp. 197, 208–09. Work Most early medieval Scandinavians ...

. The place name ''Tafeistaland'' (modern Swedish: Tavastland) in the inscription refers to a geographical region in Finland. The runic text for three consecutive words follows the rule that two consecutive identical letters are represented by a single rune, even when the two identical letters are at the end of one word and the start of a second word. When the text shown as Latin characters, the

transliterated Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus '' trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or ...

runes are doubled and separate words are shown. The rune sequence honsalukuþ is shown in the inscription below as hons, , salu, , uk, , kuþ(s) by doubling the s-, u-, and k-runes and separating the three words.

Runic inscription

Original inscription: : × brusi lit rita s-... ... a)--ʀ (i)h(i)(l) brur sin : in h-n uarþ tauþr a tafstalonti × þo brusi furþi lank lans ' abtiʀ ru)r sin h(o) fur (m)iʀ fraukiʀi kuþ hialbi hons, , salu, , uk, , kuþ(s) (m)(u) �iʀ ' suain ' uk osmunrt ' þaiʀ markaþu+ The inscription has been translated into English in two ways: * Brúsi had this stone erected in memory of Egill, his brother. And he died in Tafeistaland, when Brúsi brought led?the land's levy armyin memory of his brother. He traveled with Freygeirr. May God and God's mother help his soul. Sveinn and Ásmundr, they marked. * Brúsi had this stone erected in memory of Egill, his brother. And he died in Tafeistaland, when Brúsi bore long-spear

battle standard A war flag, also known as a military flag, battle flag, or standard, is a variant of a national flag for use by a country's military forces when on land. The nautical equivalent is a naval ensign. Under the strictest sense of the term, few countr ...

after his brother. He travelled with Freygeirr. May God and God's mother help his soul. Sveinn and Ásmundr, they marked.

References

{{coord, 60.6727, N, 17.1380, E, source:wikidata, display=title Runestones in Gästrikland 11th-century inscriptions