Northern Europe

Was Halfdan here? Norse runes which have been carved far from home can reveal a lot.

Much of what is known about Norse travellers was written by the people they met. A few runic inscriptions allow the travellers to speak for themselves, scratched into marble in Istanbul, or cut into a grave slab on a Black Sea island, or carved across the walls of an Orkney tomb.

Chronicles from Kyiv and Constantinople describe the Norsemen from the outside, but runic inscriptions are different. These were made on the spot by the people who were there, and when one of them turns up far from Scandinavia then it works like a pin in a map: someone stood here who wrote in this fashion.

A name in the Great Church

Professor Alfred Westholm in 1964 noticed scratches on the marble balustrade of the south gallery in Hagia Sophia, in the city the Norse called Mikligarðr, 'the Great City'.

Runologist Elisabeth Svärdström examined them in 1968, and in 1970 she published her findings in the Swedish journal, Fornvännen. Only the opening could be read: one worn rune followed by five clear ones which she interpreted as meaning 'Halfdan', a very common Norse name. The fifteen or so signs after it were too worn to decipher.

The popular story is that a bored member of the emperor's Norse guard carved it during a long term of service. That was Westholm's guess, and Svärdström allowed that it may hold a grain of truth.

This photo entitled 'Runen Hagia Sophia' shows runes which have been scratched into the marble balustrade of Hagia Sophia's south gallery in Istanbul, but only the opening can be deciphered, usually being read as the name Halfdan (External Link: Creative Commons Licence CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, cropped and sharpened)

She doubted an early date: the rune forms also fit the medieval period, and she preferred the late eleventh century or later when Norse guardsmen were still in favour at the Eastern Roman court.

Mats G Larsson in 1988 found a second inscription in the north gallery: 'ari:k', which he read as the name Ari, and the first rune of an unfinished word, perhaps 'made'.

A partner's grave on the Black Sea

It was around 950 that Eastern Roman Emperor Constantine VII described the Rus resting at an island he called St Aitherios, near the mouth of the Dnieper. There they fitted their boats with masts, sails, and rudders before proceeding by sea to Constantinople. The island is generally identified with Berezan.

Ernst von Stern in 1905 found there a limestone slab from a grave chest which carried a runic text. The Scandinavian runic-text database at Uppsala translates it as 'Grani made this vault in memory of Karl/Káll, his partner'.

The database dates it only to the 'Viking Age', although a dotted rune in the text suggests the eleventh century or later. The slab is now in the Odesa Archaeological Museum. It is no grand monument: one man burying his partner a long way from home and saying so in his own language.

Crusaders in a Neolithic tomb

Maeshowe in Orkney was built around 3000 BC, being described by Historic Environment Scotland as the finest Neolithic building to survive in north-western Europe.

Long after it was sealed it was Norsemen who broke in and covered its walls with light-hearted runic graffiti which the same body refers to as the largest collection of runic inscriptions to survive outside Scandinavia.

Norse runes were carved into this wall slab inside the Neolithic chamber at Maeshowe, Orkney, photographed in 1983 with the branched signs in the lower row being cipher runes (External Link: Creative Commons Licence CC BY 2.0, cropped, brightened, and sharpened)

These were not Viking raiders. The inscriptions are generally placed in the mid-twelfth century, after the point at which the 'Viking Age' is conventionally said to have ended.

One of them names 'Jerusalem-travellers' as the men who broke into the mound, with this usually being linked to the crusade which Earl Rognvald of Orkney made to the Holy Land in the early 1150s. The Orkneyinga Saga adds that Earl Harald and his men spent Yule at Orkahaug, the Norse name which generally is taken to mean Maeshowe, and that two of them were seized with madness there.

Six inscriptions talk about a treasure which was, or which ought to have been, inside the chamber. One carver claimed to be the man most skilled in runes in the Western Ocean.

Spelling by ear

What these texts share is the fact that they were written by ear. The 'Viking Age' runic alphabet had only sixteen signs, and nobody had a dictionary. On the Berezan slab the name Grani is spelled 'krani', and the dead man's name is cut as 'kal', which is why the database gives him as Karl or Káll.

Svärdström in Hagia Sophia noted that either a first 'h' had worn away or the carver simply left it out, a common slip in runic inscriptions. She even wondered whether his knowledge of runes stretched much beyond the name he had carved.

That informality is the point. At home a runestone could be a state document: at Jelling, around 965, Harald Bluetooth recorded the fact that he had won all of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian. Far from home the runes record smaller things: a name, a dead friend, a boast on a tomb wall. Their names survive because ordinary travellers wrote them down in their own way, mistaken spelling and all.

Anyone who is curious about how their own name would look in the same alphabets can try a free rune translator, one which covers the Younger Futhark of the 'Viking Age' as well as the older runes. Bear in mind the fact that Grani or Halfdan would have spelled any name by ear.

Main Sources

Historic Environment Scotland - Maeshowe chambered cairn, history and stories.

VikingsBrand rune translator

Text copyright © Drazen Bjelac. An original feature for the History Files.