The Gällsta Runestones from the 11th century commemorate four generations of the same family in

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 ...

Sweden. There are three

runestone A runestone is typically a raised stone with a runic alphabet, runic inscription, but the term can also be applied to inscriptions on boulders and on bedrock. The tradition of erecting runestones as a memorial to dead men began in the 4th centur ...

s (U 229, U 231 and U 232) and a raised stone which is only inscribed with a cross (U 230). The runestones are located at the northern outskirts of

Stockholm Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...

, just northwest of the lake Vallentunasjön, around which is found the world's greatest concentration of runestones.The introduction to ''Runriket'', at the site of Stockholm County Museum
. All the Gällsta Runestones are attributed to

Öpir Öpir or ''Öper'' (Old Norse: ''Øpiʀ''/''Œpir'', meaning "shouter") was a runemaster who flourished during the late 11th century and early 12th century in Uppland, Sweden.The article ''Öpir'' in ''Nationalencyklopedin'' (1996). He was the m ...

, the most productive of all the old

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 ...

s. The oldest two generations, Þorbjörn and his son Oddi, are only mentioned on U 229. The runestone informs that Oddi had two sons Halfdan and Tobbi or Tubbi. U 231 was raised in memory of Halfdan by his four children Heðinvé, Eysteinn, Ulfr and Ólafr, while U 232 was raised in memory of Tobbi/Tubbi by his three sons Tosti, Sigfuss and Sigmarr. Below follows a presentation of the Gällsta Runestones based on information collected from 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 ...

project. The transcriptions from

runic inscriptions 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 ...

into standardized

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 ...

are in the Swedish and Danish dialect to facilitate comparison with the inscriptions, while the English translation provided by Rundata give the names in standard dialect (the Icelandic and Norwegian dialect).

U 229

This granite runestone in style Pr4 (

Urnes style Viking art, also known commonly as Norse art, is a term widely accepted for the art of Scandinavian Norsemen and Vikings, Viking settlements further afield—particularly in the British Isles and Iceland—during the Viking Age of the 8th-11th ...

) was made by the notable

Entry U 229 in

2.0 who made more than 60 runestones.Gällsta, at the site of Stockholm County Museum
.

U 231

This runestone of

gneiss Gneiss (pronounced ) is a common and widely distributed type of metamorphic rock. It is formed by high-temperature and high-pressure metamorphic processes acting on formations composed of igneous or sedimentary rocks. This rock is formed under p ...

granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

is in style Pr5 (

) and the runemaster has been identified as Öpir.Entry U 231 in

2.0 The stone is dated to the period c. 1080 – c. 1130 AD. It was discovered in 1633 and it was depicted by the runologists of the time. Afterwards, it was lost for a long time, until it was rediscovered in the 1870s on the nearby farm Söderlund which belonged to the magistrate of the

hundred 100 or one hundred (Roman numerals, Roman numeral: C) is the natural number following 99 (number), 99 and preceding 101 (number), 101. In mathematics 100 is the square of 10 (number), 10 (in scientific notation it is written as 102). The standar ...

. The magistrate had divided the stone into two pieces to use them as gate posts, and when the antiquarian

Richard Dybeck Richard Dybeck (1 September 1811 – 28 July 1877) was a Swedish jurist, antiquarian, and lyricist. He is mainly remembered as the author of the lyrics to what is now the de facto Swedish national anthem, ''Du gamla, Du fria''. Biography Dybeck w ...

learned of this, he went to see the magistrate and severely admonished him. The latter was surprised with the allegations as not even the surveyor was able to read the "figures". The stone has been reassembled but it still misses the upper part.

U 232

This runestone of granite is in style Pr5 and like the previous runestones, the runemaster is identified as Öpir.Entry U 232 in

2.0

Notes

Sources

Gällsta
- website of the

Stockholm County Museum Stockholm County Museum () is the regional museum of Stockholm County, Sweden. The museum strives to be the natural hub of knowledge for the cultural heritage of the county's residents and to create dialogue around history, present time, and the ...

. {{DEFAULTSORT:Gallsta Runestones Runestones in Uppland

U 229

U 231

U 232

See also

Notes

Sources