The Karlevi stone

One of Scandinavia's most remarkable monuments from the Viking Age still stands today, in a field west of Karlevi, among the campsites and holiday cottages of the Swedish island of Öland. It was erected around the turn of the last millennium to honour an otherwise obscure Danish warrior and sea-captain called Sibbi. The memorial is in stone, its text is written in runes and formulated partly in verse. This rhyme on a rock is an important piece of contemporary evidence for the Viking Age ethos of masculine achievement and how it was commemorated.

The Karlevi monument is a nearly rectangular block of greyish stone, with a rounded top, not quite a metre and a half high, neatly carved on three sides with a long inscription in Danish runes. The inscription falls into two parts, clearly indicated by cross- or hammer-like marks at the beginning of each. From adjacent starting points at the bottom of the stone, both texts proceed boustrophedon (‘as an ox turns in ploughing’) in different directions, the first going off to the right and occupying three lines, the second going off to the left, occupying six lines. The first text explains why the stone is where it is. Although this part of the inscription is damaged, it is possible to reconstruct what it says, the first clause with relative certainty, the second less so (Öl 1, see fig. 1.1):

Not content with setting up a permanent memorial to his leader that still stands a millennium later, the unnamed follower also commissioned (or perhaps even composed) a memorial verse to Sibbi, and this verse forms the second part of the inscription (see fig. 1.2):