#sodermanland

[livesunique]

Stora Sundby slott,

Eskilstuna Municipality, Södermanland County, Sweden

[kryskabs]

[duchessofvastergotland]

22nd May 2019 // Crown Princess Victoria walks (and canoes and rides a horse) through the Swedish province of Södermanland. The Crown Princess is completing a series of walks across the provinces of Sweden in connection with her 40th birthday with the aim of promoting an active lifestyle and highlighting the beauty of her country’s landscapes

[yournameonstones]

Visit Sweden

[theroyalhistory]

Prince Wilhelm, Duke of Södermanland, and Princess Sophia (Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia), Duchess of Södermanland, 1910

[archaicwonder]

The Greece Runestones of Sweden

The Greece Runestones are about 30 runestones containing information related to voyages made by Norsemen to the Byzantine Empire. They were made during the Viking Age until about 1100  and were engraved in the Old Norse language with Scandinavian runes. All the stones have been found in modern-day Sweden and most of them were inscribed in memory of members of the Varangian Guard who did not make it home.

The word Grikkland (Greece) appears on these runestones in one of three different forms: Grikk(j)ar (Greeks), grikkfari (traveler to Greece) and Grikkhafnir (Greek harbors).

Scandinavians had served as mercenaries in the Roman army many centuries before the Viking Age, but during the time when the stones were made, there were more contacts between Scandinavia and Byzantium than at any other time. Swedish Viking ships were common on the Black Sea, the Aegean Sea, the Sea of Marmara and on the wider Mediterranean Sea. Greece was home to the Varangian Guard, the elite bodyguard of the Byzantine Emperor, and until the Komnenos dynasty in the late 11th century, most members of the Varangian Guard were Swedes.

The stones vary in size and material. Most of them are adorned with various runestone forms that were in use during the 11th century, especially the Ringerike and Urnes styles. The Viking Age coincided with the Christianization of Scandinavia, and on many runestones the inscriptions have traces of Christianity, while some runestones are explicitly pagan. The runestone tradition probably died out before 1100, and at the latest by 1125.

Since the first discoveries by Johannes Bureus in the late 16th century, these runestones have been frequently identified by scholars, with many stones discovered during a national search for historic monuments in the late 17th century. Several stones were documented by Richard Dybeck in the 19th century. The latest stone to be found was in Nolinge, near Stockholm, in 1952.

Pictured above are runestones U 136, Sö 165, U 518 and U 792.

You can see many more photos of the stones and read more about them on the Greece Runestones’ Wikipedia page.

[travelbinge]

Autumn house by Henrik Sundholm

Eskilstuna, Sodermanland, Sweden

[livesunique]

Tullgarns slott, Södermanland, Sweden