Vadstena bracteate

Found in the ground at Vadstena in 1774, together with a gold ring and a piece of gold sheet. A goldsmith had begun melting the find down before a local clergyman stopped him. It entered the Swedish national collections, was stolen from them in 1938, and has never been recovered, so every modern reading depends on records made before that date.

The dots dividing the row into three groups of eight are the earliest attestation of the ættir, which are otherwise a structure we would only be able to infer. That matters well beyond classification: the ætt-and-position principle is what the runic cipher systems are built on. The final d-rune sits under the moulded suspension loop and is not visible; it is supplied from the bracteate found at Mariedamm, which is struck from the same die, so it shows what this object says rather than corroborating it as a second row.