Stentoften stone
A transitional-period stone combining an apparent gift of a good harvest with a curse. It may also carry the clearest case in the whole corpus of a rune used ideographically, standing for its own name.
At a glance
- Alphabet
- Elder Futhark
- Date
- c. AD 600
- Found at
- Blekinge, Sweden
- Signature
- DR 357
The text
Why none is reproduced here.
Not reproduced. This inscription is either too long to quote in full or its reading is contested enough that printing one transliteration would suggest a settled text where there is not one. Look it up under DR 357 in the standard catalogues, where the readings are given with their apparatus.
Discovery
Found in Blekinge, originally set among five standing stones, and closely related to the Björketorp stone a few kilometres away in both wording and date. Both belong to the period when the older futhark was giving way to the reduced Scandinavian alphabet.
Why it matters
Part of the text has been read as haþuwolafʀ gaf j, "Haþuwolafʀ gave a good year", with the j-rune standing not for its sound but for its own name, ár, a good harvest. If that reading holds it is the best evidence anywhere that runes could be used ideographically, which is a claim made about runes constantly and evidenced almost nowhere else.
Common misconceptions
Claims about this object that circulate widely and do not hold up.
The ideographic reading of the j-rune is plausible and widely repeated, but the stone is damaged and the reading is an interpretation of that damage. It is regularly cited as a settled demonstration that runes were used as ideographs; it is the strongest candidate, not a proof.
Runes attested here (2)
Every dictionary entry that cites this object, with the reason it gives.
Sources
Full references on the sources page.