What do the runic inscriptions of the British Isles tell us?

Picture a man walking the coast of the Isle of Man with his chisels. His name is Gautr, and most of what we know about him he wrote himself. He is the son of Bjôrn from Kollr – the island of Coll in the Hebrides – and he is proud enough to say so in stone. On a cross at Andreas stands en Gautr gerði, sonr Bjarnar frá Kolli: but Gautr made it, son of Bjôrn from Coll. On another, at Kirk Michael, he says more: Gautr gerði þenna ok alla í Môn – Gautr made this one and all in Man.

It is a boastful sentence, and it suits him. But the cross he made that time was not his own. It was raised by Melbrigði, sonr Aðakáns Smiðs, Melbrigði, son of Aðakán the Smith. Both names are Gaelic. A Gael paid a Norseman for a cross in Norse runes, for the sake of his soul.

The coast is our picture. The names, the place and the boast are in the stones. That is where this article begins. The runes of the British Isles have often been read as traces of conquerors. We wanted to see which people actually show in them.

What there is

The Scandinavian Runic-text Database has 149 runic inscriptions from England, Ireland, Scotland, Orkney, Shetland and the Isle of Man. 84 are from the Viking Age; most of the others are the medieval graffiti in the Maeshowe mound on Orkney, which we leave for another time. Of the 84, 33 are on the Isle of Man, 16 in Ireland, 13 in England, 11 on Orkney, 7 in Scotland and 4 on Shetland. 21 are too damaged to read.

We read the rest and sorted them by what they are about. It turned out there was not one runic writing in the islands, but three.

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Three kinds of people

The families of the islands. On the Isle of Man and the Scottish isles nearly everything that can be read is a memorial: 32 of 41 inscriptions. They are crosses, not runestones, and they stand at churches. Whoever raised them was settled, Christian and had a farm to leave behind. Sandulfr hinn Svarti reisti kross þenna eptir Arinbjôrgu, konu sína – Sandulfr the Black raised this cross for Arinbjôrg, his wife. The stone says no more than that, but the nickname says something about his hair or his temper, and the cross stands at the church in Andreas so that her name would remain.

The people of Dublin. In Ireland there is a single cross. Nearly everything else is small things from the town of Dublin, where the excavations at Fishamble Street and Christ Church Place have yielded thousands of objects from the Viking-age port. Here people wrote on what was at hand: ribs, shoulder blades, a comb, a handle. Domnall Selshôfuð á sverð þetta – Domnall Seal's-head owns this sword. It is on the end fitting of a sword belt, found at Greenmount in County Louth, some way north of Dublin. A Gael with a Norse nickname. Ónn á Ásu, Ónn owns Ása – on a rib, and whether it is a joke or a claim nobody knows. Gnúpr gnúfði, Gnúpr drooped. Horn hjartar lá á ósi ár: the deer's antler lay at the river mouth. These are craftsmen and traders with a moment to spare, and it is the only place in the islands where the runes sound like everyday talk.

The passers-through in England. England is different again. There are the carvers' and makers' names, and there are the gods. On a spindle whorl from Saltfleetby stands Óðinn ok Heimdallr ok Þjálfa, þeir hjálpa þér Úlfljót – Óðinn and Heimdallr and Þjálfi, they help you, Úlfljót. Spinning was women's work, and Úlfljót may be a woman's name. Someone spun with the whorl and asked the old gods for help. The grave stone at St Paul's in London is cut in Scandinavian style in Knútr's time, and most of the English inscriptions remember no kin at all. England was the place one came to with an army or a ship, and then left again.

The wives

On the Isle of Man there are 13 crosses that state who the dead person was to the one who raised the cross. 9 of them are raised for a woman: six wives, a mother, a foster-mother and a daughter. In Scandinavia the women are few. In Sweden it is 3 per cent, about one stone in thirty. In Denmark 5 per cent, in Norway 18.

The numbers from Man are small, so it is worth saying what they mean. If the crosses on Man followed the same pattern as the Norwegian runestones – the country the Manx settlers mainly came from – so large a share of women would arise by chance about three times in a thousand. The difference from Sweden and Denmark is larger still. Nor is it the date that explains it: the Danish stones are as old as the Manx crosses, from the tenth century, and have as few women as the Swedish ones.

Druian, son of Dufgal, raised a cross for his wife Aþmiul. All three names are Gaelic. Heðinn raised one for his daughter Hlífhildr and had Árni carve the runes. On a cross at Onchan stands, last of all: Þúríð reist rúnar – Þuríð carved the runes. She is one of very few women in the whole Viking Age to put her name to a runic inscription as its carver.

Why? We cannot know, but there is a clue in what we found in the article on the women of the runestones. In Scandinavia the stones are often about inheritance: whoever raised the stone showed that he or she was taking over. The cross on Man is something else – a Christian memorial at the church, raised for the soul's sake. It is a hypothesis we have not tested: that the women show where the monument is about memory and not about inheritance.

Gaels and Norsemen in one family

Of the 75 personal names that can be read in the inscriptions, 16 are Gaelic. They are names such as Melbrigði (Máel Brigte), Dufgal (Dubgall), Malmury (Máel Muire) and Krínán (Crínán). Nearly all of them are on Man. On five of the Manx crosses Gaelic and Norse names stand in the same family.

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The cross at Kirk Michael is the clearest example. Mallymkun reisti kross þenna eptir Malmury fóstra sín, dóttur Dufgals, kona er Aðísl átti – Mallymkun raised this cross for Malmury, his foster-mother (the word fóstra can also be read otherwise), Dufgal's daughter, the wife of Aðísl. Mallymkun and Malmury and Dufgal are Gaelic; Aðísl is Norse. And below it, a proverb in Old Norse: Betra er leifa fóstra góðan en son illan. Better to leave a good foster-son behind than a bad son. It was written by a Gael about a Gaelic woman married to a Norseman. It is also cut in other runes than most of the Manx crosses – long-branch runes.

It is not a conquered people we see here. It is two peoples who marry each other, raise each other's children and write in each other's language. Scholars have seen this for a long time; Michael Barnes and Ray Page have mapped the names. What we add is that the same crosses are also the ones where the women show.

And the Swedes?

The Swedes were in the British Isles. We know it because they said so themselves – at home. 28 Swedish runestones mention England. Ulfr of Borresta hefir á Englandi þrjú gjald tekit: he has taken three payments in England, first from Tosti, then Þorketill, then Knútr. At Transjö in Småland Gautr raised a stone for his son Ketill, manna mestr óníðingr, er á Englandi aldri týndi, the least villainous of men, who lost his life in England.

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But in the islands themselves they hardly show. None of the 84 inscriptions mentions Sweden, and none can be tied to a Swedish carver. The runes on Man and on the Scottish isles are short-twig runes of the kind scholars link to Norway and the Hebrides; Gautr says himself that he came from Coll. The English ones have their roots in Denmark.

Are the Swedes over-represented, then? Only at home, and not even there. Per stone, the Swedish stones mention England about as often as the Norwegian ones: one in 83 Swedish runestones, one in 66 Norwegian. That there are so many Swedish England stones is because there are so many Swedish runestones. The Danish ones hardly ever mention England – one in 239 – but many Danish runestones were raised before Knútr's time in England.

Two stories at home

The stones at home do not tell the same thing everywhere. We read all 55 Viking-age inscriptions in Scandinavia that mention a journey west, and sorted them into three groups: 29 say the man died there, 7 that he came home, and 15 mention only the journey. We left four out, three because the reading is uncertain and one, U 539, because Sveinn died in Jutland before he reached England.

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In Götaland – Västergötland, Östergötland and Småland – 14 of 16 stones say the man died in the west. Ketill at Transjö, Tóki who was killed in England, Gunnarr whom his brother Helgi laid in a stone coffin at Bath. In Svealand, most of it the Mälaren valley, it is 11 of 29. There the stones tell instead of payments and journeys and of men who came home: Ulfr with his three payments, Áli who raised his stone for himself, Hefnir who went to England and then died at home.

The Götaland stones are as a rule older than those of Uppland, so we tested the difference within each style group separately. It holds. Comparing stones of the same age, so large a difference would arise by chance about fem times in a thousand.

Why, we do not know. Perhaps the men of Götaland went in other armies, with the Danish king before Knútr's time, and fewer came back. Perhaps the custom differed: in Götaland a stone was raised when a man died abroad, in the Mälaren valley also over the man who came home with silver and died in his bed. The stones show what the survivors chose to tell, not how many died. It is a new observation, and it needs testing against other kinds of sources.

The picture that emerges is simple. The Swedes went to England as soldiers and took payment, and in Götaland the stones were mostly raised for those who did not come home. The Norwegians and the people of the Hebrides stayed, married Gaels and raised crosses at the churches on Man. They were the ones who wrote in the islands.

Sources

• Scandinavian Runic-text Database 3.1 (Rundata). Uppsala University.
• Barnes, Michael P. & Page, R. I. 2006. The Scandinavian Runic Inscriptions of Britain. Runrön 19. Uppsala.
• Barnes, Michael P., Hagland, Jan Ragnar & Page, R. I. 1997. The Runic Inscriptions of Viking Age Dublin. Medieval Dublin Excavations 1962–81, Ser. B, vol. 5. Dublin.
• Kermode, P. M. C. 1907. Manx Crosses. London.
• Vitki's article She inherited from her child – the women on the runestones.