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The Hogganvik runestone is a fifth-century
The Hogganvik runestone is a fifth-century 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 ...
, bearing an Elder Futhark
The Elder Futhark (or Fuþark, ), also known as the Older Futhark, Old Futhark, or Germanic Futhark, is the oldest form of the runic alphabets. It was a writing system used by Germanic peoples for Northwest Germanic dialects in the Migration Per ...
inscription, that was discovered in September 2009 by Arnfinn Henriksen, a resident of Hogganvik, in the Sånum-Lundevik area of Mandal
A tehsil (, also known as tahsil, taluk, or taluka () is a local unit of administrative division in India and Pakistan. It is a subdistrict of the area within a district including the designated populated place that serves as its administrative c ...
, Vest-Agder
Vest-Agder (; "West Agder") was one of 18 counties (''fylker'') in Norway from 1 January 1919 to 31 December 2019, after it was merged with Aust-Agder to form Agder county. In 2016, there were 182,701 inhabitants, around 3.5% of the total popul ...
, Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...
, while working in the garden.
Description
The Hogganvik runestone is a stone slab of about , weighing approximately . It was lying face down and therunic inscription
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 ...
is therefore well preserved. The inscription, which is in Proto-Norse
Proto-Norse (also called Ancient Nordic; Danish and ; ; ; ) was an Indo-European language spoken in Scandinavia that is thought to have evolved as a northern dialect of Proto-Germanic in the first centuries CE. It is the earliest stage of a c ...
, can be approximately dated to between 350 and 500 CE and consists of 62 characters, one a bind-rune. This is an exceptionally long text for the early period, either the second longest after that of the Tune stone (known since 1627), or possibly the third; the inscription on the Rö stone has missing and illegible runes.
A report was issued in October 2009 by runologist James E. Knirk, and provides a transliteration of the inscription.
Text
The stone is a memorial. The meaningless sequences, with the repeated ''a'' runes, may be alphabet magic. The fourth line is hard to interpret. The middle two lines name the carver of the runes.Archaeological investigation
In May 2010 an archaeological investigation was carried out. The face of the stone with the inscription was shown to be more weathered than the underside, indicating it had been raised over a grave, and a largeIron Age
The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...
burial was found under the site, but was not excavated.
See also
*List of runestones
There are about 3,000 runestones in Scandinavia (out of a total of about 6,000 runic inscriptions). p. 38.
The runestones are unevenly distributed in Scandinavia:
The majority are found in Sweden, estimated at between 1,700 and 2,500 (depending ...
References
Further reading
* * *External links
* * {{Coord, 58, 2, 15.187, N, 7, 21, 53.856, E, region:NO-10_type:landmark, display=title Mandal, Norway 5th-century inscriptions Runestones in Norway Proto-Norse language 2009 archaeological discoveries Elder Futhark inscriptions