The Möjbro Runestone is 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 ...

that is designated as U 877 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 and is inscribed 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 ...

using the

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 ...

. It was found in Möjbro, which is about 8 kilometers north of

Örsundsbro Örsundsbro is a locality situated in Enköping Municipality, Uppsala County, Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway ...

Uppsala County Uppsala County () is a county or '' län'' on the eastern coast of Sweden, whose capital is the city of Uppsala. It borders the counties of Dalarna, Stockholm, Södermanland, Västmanland, Gävleborg, and the Baltic Sea. Province The nor ...

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 ...

, which is in the historic province of

Uppland Uppland is a historical province or ' on the eastern coast of Sweden, just north of Stockholm, the capital. It borders Södermanland, Västmanland and Gästrikland. It is also bounded by lake Mälaren and the Baltic Sea. The name literally ...

. The runestone is on display at the

Swedish Museum of National Antiquities The Swedish History Museum () is a museum located in Stockholm, Sweden, that covers Swedish archaeology and cultural history from the Mesolithic period to present day. Founded in 1866, it operates as a government agency and is tasked with preservi ...

Stockholm Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...

. Formerly placed in the 3rd century, the inscription and drawing are now mostly placed in the 5th or early 6th centuries.

History

Although the stone has been known since the initial surveys of runestones in Sweden during the 1600s, its exact original location is not known. The runestone is in height and made of granite. It is considered to be fragile. To protect the stone and its shallow inscription, it was moved in 1948 from Möjbro to the Swedish Museum of National Antiquities.

Drawing

The Möjbro Runestone is notable not only for being one of few runestones in Proto-Norse, but also for showing what is considered to be an artistically crafted image of a rider on a horse with two dogs. It is believed to have been inspired by continental Germanic images of victorious warriors on horses and that it ultimately derives from the motifs of horsemen common on

tombstones A gravestone or tombstone is a marker, usually stone, that is placed over a grave. A marker set at the head of the grave may be called a headstone. An especially old or elaborate stone slab may be called a funeral stele, stela, or slab. The us ...

of members of the

Roman cavalry Roman cavalry (Latin: ''equites Romani'') refers to the horse-mounted forces of the Roman army throughout the regal, republican, and imperial eras. In the regal era, the Roman cavalry was a group of 300 soldiers called ''celeres'', tasked wi ...

late Roman Empire In historiography, the Late or Later Roman Empire, traditionally covering the period from 284 CE to 641 CE, was a time of significant transformation in Roman governance, society, and religion. Diocletian's reforms, including the establishment of t ...

era art.

Inscription

The inscription is to be read from right to left, and from bottom to top. It transliterates as :''frawaradaz / anahahaisla na/z''. Several interpretations have been put forth for the inscription, but the only thing that can be said with certainty on the interpretation of the inscription is that ''Frawaradaz'' is the name of a man (and even the interpretation of the name is debated). The most common view is that the final part of the inscription is to be read as ''slaginaz'' "slain", indicating that the stone is a memorial and that it says that Frawaradaz was slain. Hempl (1900), by contrast, read ''langiniz'', reading the letter transliterated '' ' above as a

bind rune A bind rune or bindrune () is a Migration Period Germanic typographic ligature, ligature of two or more Runic alphabet, runes. They are extremely rare in Viking Age inscriptions, but are common in earlier (Proto-Norse) and later (medieval) inscri ...

(ligature) for ''ng'' (/ŋ/). The middle part of the inscription, reading ''anahahai'' or similar, has given rise to a wide variety of tentative interpretations, most of them assuming that it gives additional information on the person of Frawaradaz or on the circumstances of his death, including "Āna, the one-eyed", "the noble", "on the racer"/"on his steed/horse", "of Hagho", "in Hagho". Grønvik (1985) gives an alternative interpretation inasmuch as he has the ''slaginaz'' refer to the horse, not the dead man, reading "Frawarādaz s buried here- Over

he dead one He or HE may refer to: Language * He (letter), the fifth letter of the Semitic abjads * He (pronoun), a pronoun in Modern English * He (kana), one of the Japanese kana (へ in hiragana and ヘ in katakana) * Ge (Cyrillic), a Cyrillic letter cal ...

the horse was slaughtered." Elmevik (1978) interprets the final word as ''laikīnaz'', preceded by the copula ''is'': ''Frawarādaz ainahāhǣ is laikinaz.'' The ''ainahāhǣ'' is interpreted as "the only high one" (=the one most noble of all), and the ''is laikinaz'' either as "is eager to fight" or "is killed intentionally" or "is killed by witchcraft". Krause (1966) segments the top line of text into "ana hahai slaginaz." "Hahai" here is interpreted as "hanhē," indicating both the occurrence in speech of the aspirant h preceded by a vowel and a nasal to be realised as nasalised vowel (explaining the representation as "hahai" instead of expected "hanhai) and the development of the Proto-Germanic dative ending from /-ai/ to /-ē/ over time. This second indication would suggest that the spelling on the Möjbro Runestone is an inherited, archaicised spelling from earlier Proto-Germanic.The inscription is thus interpreted to mean "on (his) steed slain."

References

Other sources

*The article ''Möjbrostenen'' in ''

Nationalencyklopedin (; "The National Encyclopedia" in English), abbreviated NE, is a comprehensive contemporary Swedish-language encyclopedia with several hundred thousand articles. It is available both online and via a printed version. History The project was ...

'' (1994). *

External links