Karlevi stone
The only runestone carrying a complete skaldic stanza in dróttkvætt, the most technically demanding metre of the age. Evidence that runic writing could handle far more than memorial formulas.
At a glance
- Alphabet
- Younger Futhark
- Date
- Late 10th century
- Found at
- Karlevi, Öland, Sweden
- Signature
- Öl 1
The text
Why none is reproduced here.
Not reproduced. This inscription is either too long to quote in full or its reading is contested enough that printing one transliteration would suggest a settled text where there is not one. Look it up under Öl 1 in the standard catalogues, where the readings are given with their apparatus.
Discovery
Stands beside a burial mound on Öland, and has never been moved. It commemorates a chieftain, and the prose part of the text is ordinary enough; it is the verse that makes it exceptional.
Why it matters
Dróttkvætt is an intricately alliterated and internally rhymed metre packed with kennings, and it is otherwise known almost entirely from manuscripts written down centuries after composition. Karlevi is the one place where a full stanza survives contemporaneously, cut in runes. That it does so in an alphabet that cannot distinguish several vowels is a useful demonstration of how much a reader was expected to supply.
Runes attested here (2)
Every dictionary entry that cites this object, with the reason it gives.
Sources
Full references on the sources page.