The Kingittorsuaq Runestone (old spelling: ''Kingigtorssuaq''), listed as GR 1 in the
Rundata
The Scandinavian Runic-text Database () is a project involving the creation and maintenance of a database of transliterated runic inscriptions. The project's goal is to comprehensively catalog runestones in a machine-readable way for future resea ...
catalog, is a runestone that was found on
Kingittorsuaq Island, an island in the
Upernavik Archipelago
Upernavik Archipelago is a vast coastal archipelago in the Avannaata municipality in northwestern Greenland, off the shores of northeastern Baffin Bay. The archipelago extends from the northwestern coast of Sigguup Nunaa peninsula in the south at ...
in northwestern
Greenland
Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...
.
Description
The Kingittorsuaq Runestone was found in 1824 in a group of three
cairn
A cairn is a human-made pile (or stack) of stones raised for a purpose, usually as a marker or as a burial mound. The word ''cairn'' comes from the (plural ).
Cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes. In prehistory, t ...
s that formed an
equilateral triangle
An equilateral triangle is a triangle in which all three sides have the same length, and all three angles are equal. Because of these properties, the equilateral triangle is a regular polygon, occasionally known as the regular triangle. It is the ...
on top of the mountain on
Kingittorsuaq Island in the south-central part of the
Upernavik Archipelago
Upernavik Archipelago is a vast coastal archipelago in the Avannaata municipality in northwestern Greenland, off the shores of northeastern Baffin Bay. The archipelago extends from the northwestern coast of Sigguup Nunaa peninsula in the south at ...
. The stone is now located at the
National Museum of Denmark
The National Museum of Denmark (Nationalmuseet) in Copenhagen is Denmark, Denmark's largest museum of cultural history, comprising the histories of Danish and foreign cultures, alike. The museum's main building is located a short distance from S ...
in
Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a population of 1.4 million in the Urban area of Copenhagen, urban area. The city is situated on the islands of Zealand and Amager, separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the ...
.
The stone has been dated to the
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...
. The ''
Catholic Encyclopedia
''The'' ''Catholic Encyclopedia: An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church'', also referred to as the ''Old Catholic Encyclopedia'' and the ''Original Catholic Encyclopedi ...
'' states the date as April 25, 1135. Others have dated the stone between 1250 and 1333.
However, as the historian Finn Gad has pointed out, the date given on the stone can be interpreted in various ways. As such, it cannot, as previously thought, be taken as evidence for the three hunters named on the stone in this region.
Inscription
The first line is the transcription verbatim; the second line is the normalized Old Norse version. A ^ mark indicates a
bind rune; for example a^r indicates that ᛆᚱ is written as a single glyph. A ~ indicates an unspecified punctuation mark.
Undeciphered runes
The six runes following the translated text are undeciphered, though they do have very close single-character components.
The first two and final runes appear to have two components,
a
Sowilō (ᛋ) with a
Mannaz
is the conventional name of the /m/ Runic alphabet, rune of the Elder Futhark. It is derived from the reconstructed Proto-Germanic (or Common Germanic) Man (word), word for 'man', .
The Younger Futhark equivalent is ('Human, man'). It too ...
(ᛘ) and/or
Algiz
Algiz (also Elhaz) is the name conventionally given to the "''z''-rune" of the Elder Futhark runic alphabet. Its transliteration is ''z'', understood as a phoneme of the Proto-Germanic language, the terminal ''*z'' continuing Proto-Indo-Europe ...
(ᛉ) on the top and bottom.
The following three runes appear also to have the top and bottom Mannaz or Algiz, just with a
Jēran
Jera (also Jeran, Jeraz, Yera) is the conventional name of the ''j''-rune of the Elder Futhark, from a reconstructed Common Germanic stem (linguistics), stem 'Cf. Page (2005:15). The word may have been either neuter or masculine in Common Germ ...
(ᛄ) instead.
Some believe that they are meaningless, while others believe that it contains a secret message.
See also
*
1824 in archaeology
*
Greenlandic Norse
Greenlandic Norse is an extinct North Germanic language that was spoken in the Norse settlements of Greenland until their demise in the late 15th century. The language is primarily attested by runic inscriptions found in Greenland. The limited ...
*
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 ...
*
Cipher runes
Cipher runes, or cryptic runes, are the cryptographical replacement of the letters of the runic alphabet.
Preservation
The knowledge of cipher runes was best preserved in Iceland, and during the 17th–18th centuries, Icelandic scholars produce ...
References
External links
Runic inscription from Greenland(Text only in )
{coord, 55.6750, N, 12.5751, E, source:wikidata, display=title
Upernavik Archipelago
1824 archaeological discoveries
Runestones