Saturday, March 28, 2009

A Viking Cross

A Viking Cross

Out on a a bike ride recently, I stopped near Svensro in Handen. On a hillside only meters from the busy Dalarö road, there's a runic inscription. Made one thousand years ago when the Vikings ruled. The inscription was forgotten for many centuries, only to be found again in 1964. On this visit I only took a few zoomed in photos. Here you see a Viking cross with two rings around it. Which is very uncommon. To see the whole runic inscription and read the translation follow this link. The runes used on the runestones are called fuþark. The name comes from the first letters in that alphabet. In total around the world there are around 6000 known runic inscriptions. 2500 of those can be found in Sweden.

5 comments:

cieldequimper said...

Both photos are stunning and so interesting.

Julie ScottsdaleDailyPhoto.com said...

very interesting and the Viking cross is superb and it sounds like, very rare.

Stefan Jansson said...

Thanks. I have a flickr set with a few more rune stones.

stromsjo said...

Well, at least we're world leaders in runes then.

Kris McCracken said...

That is so very cool. People forget how much those Vikings got about!