Östergötland Runic Inscription 43 or Ög 43 is the

Rundata The Scandinavian Runic-text Data Base ( sv, Samnordisk runtextdatabas) is a project involving the creation and maintenance of a database of runic inscriptions. The project's goal is to comprehensively catalog runestones in a machine-readable way f ...

catalog number for a

Viking Age The Viking Age () was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonizing, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America. It followed the Migration Period and the Ger ...

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 El ...

that is carved on a rockface in Ingelstad, which is 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 Linköp ...

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,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

Description

The inscription 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 the inscription 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 hal ...

are also carved nearby. The runic text is in the

younger futhark The Younger Futhark, also called Scandinavian runes, is a runic alphabet and a reduced form of the Elder Futhark, with only 16 characters, in use from about the 9th century, after a "transitional period" during the 7th and 8th centuries. The r ...

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 Peri ...

. p. 451. The

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

, which is dated to this same period, also mixes runes from both futharks in its inscription. Because of this, this inscription 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 that the inscription is a ritualistic comparison of the winter sun and the bright summer sun, and represents an encrypted magical call for the sun to shine. The d-rune of the second line has been transcribed into

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is 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 of Scandinavia and t ...

as an

ideogram An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek "idea" and "to write") is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept, independent of any particular language, and specific words or phrases. Some ideograms are comprehensible only by famili ...

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 ...

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, and into the Nordic folklore of the modern period ...

Inscription

Transliteration of the runes into Latin characters

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

entry for Ög 43.

Transcription into Old Norse

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

Translation in English

: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