What do Viking runestones actually say?

Mostly this: so-and-so raised this stone in memory of so-and-so. Virtually all late Viking Age runestones follow one formula, telling in memory of whom the stone is raised, who raised it, and often how they were related. A runestone is a raised stone carved with runes, and there are about 3,000 of them among some 6,000 runic inscriptions in Scandinavia. When they were new they were usually brightly coloured, though the colour has worn off.

The famous ones are about travel, but they are a minority. Stones that tell of foreign voyages are only about 10% of all runestones, and they usually mark men who did not come back. Most stones, contrary to common belief, remember people who died at home. And 94% of the stones commemorate men, while only one stone in eight was raised by a single woman.

The few that do speak about adventures are vivid. The Lingsberg stone remembers a man who had taken two payments in England. The Ingvar Runestones remember an expedition to the Muslim world, and none of the more than 25 stones tells of a survivor.

The stones could also carry a message about power and faith. King Harald Bluetooth, newly baptised, had a runestone made that says he won Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian, and scores of chieftains copied him. They were also used to mark territory and to explain inheritance. So read a runestone as a family notice board for a very long time: a gravestone, a land claim and a boast, in one.