Kylver stone
The oldest complete futhark row known, and the reason we can speak of a traditional runic order at all. It was cut on the underside of a slab sealing a grave, facing the body, where nobody could read it.
At a glance
- Alphabet
- Elder Futhark
- Date
- c. AD 400
- Found at
- Kylver, Stånga, Gotland, Sweden
- Now
- Swedish History Museum, Stockholm
- Signature
- G 88
The text
Transliteration in the conventional runological form. Translations on this site are our own and deliberately literal.
[f]uþarkg[w] hnijpïzs tbemlŋdo · sueus
Discovery
Found in 1903 during the excavation of a cemetery at the Kylver farm in Stånga, Gotland. The stone is a flat limestone slab that had been used to close a grave, and the runes are on the underside, the face turned towards the body. Whatever the row was for, it was not for a passing reader.
Why it matters
It carries the earliest sequential listing of all 24 Elder Futhark runes, which is what makes the conventional order reconstructible. Several characters are cut in forms later abandoned: the a, s and b runes are mirrored against their usual shapes and the z rune is upside down. The f and the w are cut incompletely, which is why the transliteration above brackets them: the row is read as complete, but those two characters are not fully there on the stone. Two further marks sit outside the row and neither is understood. After the last rune comes a tall tree-like character (one stave carrying six twigs on the left and eight on the right), usually read as a bindrune of stacked t-runes, and sometimes as t-runes and a-runes together invoking Týr and the Æsir; the second reading is a guess resting on the first. Then comes a separate word, sueus, which is a palindrome, has never been explained, and is likewise read as a protective formula only by conjecture.
Common misconceptions
Claims about this object that circulate widely and do not hold up.
Kylver is routinely presented as giving "the" order of the Elder Futhark. It gives one order, and on the two points where the early rows disagree (eihwaz against perthro, and dagaz against othala) it stands alone against the bracteates, the Breza column and the Charnay fibula. The order in modern use follows Kylver on one of those and the majority on the other, and so reproduces no surviving row exactly.
Runes attested here (17)
Every dictionary entry that cites this object, with the reason it gives.
- FehuElder
The oldest complete futhark row known. It begins with this rune, which is how we know the traditional order.
- ŪruzElder
Second position in the futhark row.
- ÞurisazElder
Third position in the futhark row.
- KaunanElder
Sixth position in the futhark row, giving the alphabet the k of "futhark".
- GebōElder
Seventh position in the futhark row.
- NaudizElder
Tenth position in the futhark row.
- ĪsazElder
Eleventh position in the futhark row.
- Īhwaz / *eihwazElder
Fourteenth position on Kylver, which puts perthro ahead of this rune: the reverse of the order used here and in most modern charts. Kylver is alone in that: the Vadstena–Mariedamm die, the Grumpan bracteate, the Breza column and the Charnay fibula all put this rune first.
- PerþrōElder
Thirteenth position on Kylver, ahead of eihwaz, and Kylver is the only row that does this. The Vadstena–Mariedamm die, the Grumpan bracteate, the Breza column and the Charnay fibula all reverse the pair, and modern charts follow them.
- TīwazElder
Seventeenth position, opening the third ætt.
- BerkananElder
Eighteenth position in the futhark row.
- EhwazElder
Nineteenth position in the futhark row.
- MannazElder
Twentieth position in the futhark row.
- LaguzElder
Twenty-first position in the futhark row.
- IngwazElder
Twenty-second position in the futhark row.
- DagazElder
Twenty-third position, but the Vadstena bracteate puts this rune last instead.
- ŌþalanElder
The last rune of the earliest complete futhark row.
Sources
Full references on the sources page.