The Kulisteinen, also known as the Kuli stone and listed as N 449 in the Rundata catalog, is a stone with a runic inscription that was originally located at Kuløy in Smøla municipality, Norway.

Description

For over 900 years the Kuli stone had been at Kuløy, but then 1913 it was moved to Vitenskapsmuseet i Trondheim. It had a Christian cross, cross on the broad side, indicating that it was a Christianity, Christian marker. Then in 1956 curator Aslak Liestøl noticed that the stone had a runic inscription along the narrow edge. It reads in Old Norse: "Tore and Hallvard erected this stone ... (for) twelve winters/years Christianity had been in Norway". In the mid-1990s the inscription was subjected to laser scanning and microcartography in an attempt to arrive at a more sure reading. It was then suggested that the word translated "been" (''vært'') above should be read as ''um rétt'', and that this could mean that Christianity had "supplied law and order" for twelve years. The runic stone would then have been propaganda for the new religion, Christianity. There are, however, serious paleographic and philological/linguistic problems with the new reading and interpretation. It was first suggested by Nils Halan that the inscription refers to a national event, the establishment of the law that formally made Christianity the religion of Norway at the Moster Thing (assembly), Thing in either 1022 or 1024 by King Olaf II of Norway, Olaf Haraldsson. The Kuli stone was later dated to 1034 since it was originally found adjacent to a Viking Age boardwalk dated Dendrochronology, dendrochronologically to that year, on the assumption that the two were contemporaneous. Others have suggested that the inscription refers to the conquest of Norway in 995 by King Olaf I of Norway, Olaf Tryggvason and his forced conversions. The transcription and translation below use that accepted in the Rundata database. The runic text refers to ''Nóregi'', or Norway. One other Viking Age runestone refers to Norway, the Jelling Stones#Runestone of Harald Bluetooth, larger Jelling Stone DR 42, which was raised by King Harald Bluetooth of Denmark and uses the name ''Norveg''. The Kuli stone also marks the first known use of the word "Christianity" in Norway.

Inscription

Transliteration of the runes into Latin characters

:þurir : auk : hal(u)arþr : rai(s)(t)(u) * stain : þins(i) * aft u(l)f(l)iu(t) ... ¶ tualf * uintr * ha(f)(þ)i : (k)r(i)(s)(t)(i)(n)*(t)umr : (u)iri(t) * (i) n(u)riki ...Project Samnordisk Runtextdatabas Svensk
- Rundata entry for N 449.

Transcription into Old Norse

:''Þórir ok Hallvarðr reistu stein þenna ept Ulfljót(?) ... Tolf vetr hafði kristindómr verit í Nóregi ...''

Translation in English

:Þórir and Hallvarðr raised this stone in memory of Ulfljótr(?) ... Christianity had been twelve winters in Norway ...

References

External links

Kulturnett.no
— in Norwegian
Photograph of runestone
{{coord, 63.2965, N, 8.0878, E, source:wikidata, display=title 11th-century inscriptions Runestones in Norway Archaeological sites in Norway