"...raised all of these stones": Multiple runic inscription monuments in Viking Age Scandinavia

Time period:

1 January 2015 – 31 December 2017

Project leader:

Maja Bäckvall

Funder:

Swedish Research Council

Type of award:

Project grant

Total funding:

3,150,000 SEK

This project is a systematic study of runestones and monuments with multiple runic inscriptions. These inscriptions can either be apportioned on different sides of one stone or over a series of interrelated runestones. The focus is on the contemporary audience of the monuments and how they are guided through the text by its composition, and it aims to understand the communicative choices behind carving several connected inscriptions rather than the more common single surface. To this end, the monuments will be analysed using multimodal analysis, developed for analysing texts where meaning is conveyed through several different modes, such as language, images and layout. The project also seeks to compare the distribution of these monuments across time and space, as well as construct a categorisation and typology based on the division of syntactic features across the inscribed surfaces. The study fills a gap in runology which is noticeable in the ad hoc assumptions made by previous runologists concerning multiple inscription monuments, and it will provide a basis for more informed interpretations in future scholarship. The project will be conducted in Copenhagen and Uppsala, connecting two of the main centres of runology in the world. Expertise on the older and more complex Danish material will be combined with a familiarity with the younger and more numerous Swedish runestones, enabling a greater understanding of the landscape of the Scandinavian runic tradition as a whole.