She inherited from her child – the women on the runestones
Women are among those who raised one runestone in four where it can be read who raised it, but only one stone in thirty that states the relationship was raised in memory of a woman. Were women the vanguard of Christianity, as is often said? Our numbers say no. They point instead to inheritance: a woman raised the stone when she stood in the man's place, as widow or mother.
Inga raised the staff and stones in memory of Ragnfastr, her husband. She inherited from her child.
So it reads on a runestone at Vreta in Uppland. It is one of four stones that Inga raised in memory of her husband Ragnfastr of Snottsta, and it says something almost no other runestone says outright: that she inherited. Inga's stones are among the best-known women's stones. But how common were women on the runestones, and why do they appear there?
Who got a runestone?
We went through the Swedish runestones where it can be read who raised the stone and in memory of whom – 1,144 stones. In 746 of them the relationship is also given: in memory of Ragnfastr, her husband, in memory of Gunnarr, his son.
The scale runs from 0 to 60 %. Source: Vitki's analysis of the Scandinavian Runic-text Data Base; the 746 Swedish runestones that state the relationship to the dead.
The picture is clear. Over half the stones were raised in memory of a father, and nearly all the rest in memory of a son, a brother or a husband. Only 23 stones were raised in memory of a mother, a wife, a daughter or a sister. If we also count the stones where a woman is named among the dead, there are 112 stones, or 10 %. The runestone was above all a memorial to men.
Who raised the stone?
Among those who raised the stones, women are far more numerous. Of the 1,144 stones where it can be read who raised them, a woman is among the raisers on 288, that is 25 %, and on 148 she raises the stone alone. That is just under half of all Swedish runestones; on the others the text is damaged or does not say who raised the stone. So women are seldom remembered on the stones, but they are often among those who raised them.
The scale runs from 0 to 40 %. Source: as above; stones where it is stated who raised them.
It differs between provinces. In Uppland a woman is among the raisers on 31 % of the stones, in Småland on 11 %. A difference this large between the provinces would arise by chance in about one case in 3,100.
Over time there is no clear change. The share varies between the style groups, but when we compare stones in the same province, the odds that a woman is among the raisers rise only weakly over time, probably somewhere between unchanged and almost double per fifty years (p 0.16: a change of that size easily arises by chance).
The scale runs from 0 to 50 %. Source: as above; stones dated by their style group (Gräslund 2006).
Were women the vanguard of Christianity?
A common idea is that women led the way when Christianity came, and that stones raised by women are therefore more often Christian. We tested it with stones from the same style group and the same province.
It does not hold. Of the stones women helped raise, 69 % have a cross or a Christian prayer, against 70 % of the others. With style group and province held constant, a stone that a woman helped raise has 0.9 times the odds of being Christian, probably somewhere between 0.6 and 1.3 – in practice no difference (p 0.44). The prayer is slightly more common on women's stones (23 against 20 %), and so is bridge-building (10 against 7 %), but not enough to be told apart from chance.
If anything it points the other way. Stones a woman raised alone have a cross or a prayer in 57 % of cases, against 72 % of the others. The difference shows clearly in one half of the material but not in the other, so we do not count it as a finding.
Our hypothesis: the woman in the man's place
That women raised runestones is well known, and Birgit Sawyer has suggested that the runestones are often about inheritance – that whoever raised the stone showed that she or he was the heir (Sawyer 2000). What we add is the measurement: how often women appear, that their stones are no more Christian than others, and in memory of whom they raised them.
The last is decisive. When a man raises a stone alone, it is most often in memory of his father (45 %), then of a son or brother. When a woman raises a stone alone, it is nearly always in memory of her husband (45 %) or son (32 %). For her father she raises a stone alone in only 14 % of cases.
A woman alone (103 stones)
A man alone (293 stones)
The scale runs from 0 to 50 %. Source: as above; stones raised by one person alone that state the relationship.
Our hypothesis is that a woman raised the stone when she stood in the man's place. When the husband died, it was the widow who carried the farm and the inheritance on. When a son died without children of his own, the inheritance could pass to his mother – as for Inga, who inherited from her child. Then it was she who raised the stone. A daughter who had brothers, on the other hand, seldom raised a stone alone for her father; her brothers did.
A first test: inheritance in words
If the stones are about inheritance, women's stones should more often speak of inheritance outright, like Inga's. They do not: 7 of the 288 stones women helped raise mention inheritance or ownership, against 25 of the 856 others – 2 against 3 %. Inheritance was seldom stated outright, whoever raised the stone.
That does not mean inheritance did not matter, but that it shows in who raised the stone and for whom, not in the words. So we state the hypothesis more sharply:
A woman appears on the runestone when she stands in the man's place – as widow for her husband and as mother for her son. It is the family's order that decides, not the new faith and not what is written out.
The test has its limits: we seldom know whether the dead had children or brothers, and so who actually inherited.
How the hypothesis can be tested further
- The families. Where the same family appears on several stones, like Inga's and her mother's, one can follow who inherited from whom. If the hypothesis holds, a woman raises the stone when there is no man closer in the order of inheritance.
- The provinces. The difference between Uppland and Småland can be compared with what the medieval provincial laws say about women's inheritance. Does women's place on the stones follow the rules of inheritance?
- The daughters. If the stones follow inheritance, daughters should raise stones for their father above all when they had no brothers. That can be tested on stones where the siblings are named.
- The bridges. Women build bridges slightly more often than men. With more stones one can see whether it is a Christian custom of the women's own or chance.
Caveats
- Gender is determined from Rundata's translation and from the names. The names' endings are a good but not faultless clue, and a few names may be wrongly determined.
- Only stones where it is stated who raised them are counted, and damaged texts can hide both names and relationships.
- The relationship does not tell who actually inherited. The hypothesis rests on the order of inheritance being reflected in who raised the stone, not on it being written.
- An association is not a cause. The hypothesis explains the pattern, but other explanations are possible – for example that it was customary for the nearest relative in the household to raise the stone, inheritance or not.
See for yourself
On the conversion on the runestones: The prayer fell silent – but the cross remained.
The maps, curves and models come from Vitki, an open tool for runestone research that you can download and run on your own computer from GitHub. The method is described in METHODS.md.
Sources and data
- Scandinavian Runic-text Data Base (Rundata), Department of Scandinavian Languages, Uppsala University. Open Database License.
- Sawyer, B. 2000. The Viking-Age Rune-Stones: Custom and Commemoration in Early Medieval Scandinavia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Gräslund, A.-S. 2006. Dating the Swedish Viking-Age rune stones on stylistic grounds. In: M. Stoklund et al. (eds), Runes and their Secrets: Studies in Runology. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, pp. 117–139.
- Photos: Wikimedia Commons, with photographer and licence in the captions.