Stora Levene () is a

locality Locality may refer to: * Locality, a historical named location or place in Canada * Locality (association), an association of community regeneration organizations in England * Locality (linguistics) * Locality (settlement) * Suburbs and localitie ...

situated in

Vara Municipality Vara Municipality () is a municipality in Västra Götaland County in western Sweden. Its seat is located in the town of Vara. The present municipality consists of 25 original local government entities (as of 1863). Between 1974 and 1982 the ter ...

Västra Götaland County Västra Götaland County () is a county or '' län'' on the western coast of Sweden. The county is the second most populous of Sweden's counties and it comprises 49 municipalities (''kommuner''). Its population of 1,616,000 amounts to 17% of S ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

with 761 inhabitants in 2010. According to a regnal list appended to the Westrogothic law, two Swedish kings in the 11th century,

Håkan the Red Håkan the Red ( Swedish: ''Håkan Röde'') was a King of Sweden, reigning for about half a decade in the second half of the 11th century.''Håkan Röde'' in ''Nationalencyklopedin'': There is little information on him, and it is mostly contradic ...

and

Stenkil Stenkil (Old Norse: ''Steinkell''; died 1066) was a King of Sweden who ruled c. 1060 until 1066. He succeeded Emund the Old and became the first king from the House of Stenkil. He is praised as a devout Christian, but with an accommodating stanc ...

, came from Levene. The church, in the church village on the outskirts of the modern village, is from the 13th century, and holds the grave of the 17th century '' landshövding'' Johan Henriksson Reuter. During a renovation in 1927, a

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 ...

was found built into the church wall. Known as ''Levenstenen'' ('the Levene stone'), it is Sweden's tallest runestone.

References

Populated places in Vara Municipality {{VästraGötaland-geo-stub