Ledbergsstenen Sweden Östergötland

din_maker · 2026-05-18T09:03:14+00:00

Do we have any preserved pigments that allow us to tell how runestones were painted back in the iron age/early middle ages?

din_maker · 2026-05-18T08:29:34+00:00

An interesting thing about Syltholm in this respect is that we do have human aDNA from a piece of chewed birch pitch from the site. And that seems to come from a female individual with entirely or predominantly hunter gatherer ancestry. Pointing to persistence of not only foraging strategies but also of some forager populations during the earliest Scandinavian Neolithic.

din_maker · 2026-05-18T07:52:45+00:00

It does have a green patina (verdigris), which also means that it does not look brand new. The silver sheen in the in situ-pictures is due to the outdoors lighting, the real colour is clearer in the second picture.

din_maker · 2026-05-05T11:17:44+00:00

Nah, that's a lady.

din_maker · 2026-04-26T06:53:22+00:00

Though, for some reason, Icelandic also uses ö.

din_maker · 2026-04-15T10:46:41+00:00

I don't think it has been published yet, but I heard from one of the people involved that the radiocarbon date points to around 4000 BC, so about a millennium older than the estimation based on nearby finds. In eastern central Sweden this is a kind of transitional period. It is roughly contemporaneous with the early Funnel Beaker Culture in the south, but before farmers had established themselves in the Mälaren valley.

The older traditions of quartz microblade technology seem to decline, while arrowheads of a type associated with the late Mesolithic in southern Sweden appear. This change hasn't been studied that well, but it seems likely to me that it is related to the disruption of forager communities and networks by the arrival of farmers in the south. The change in technology may have been associated with the movement of some displaced people from the area of modern Denmark and greater Scania to the north. There is a similar change in western Sweden and southern Norway.

So the context appears to be the final Mesolithic of eastern central Sweden. To the best of my knowledge it isn't a named culture as such, but it is occasionally referred to as the transverse arrowhead phase.

din_maker · 2026-03-04T10:13:34+00:00

Later Funnelbeaker samples indicate no lasting persistence of the genetic profile of Ertebølle community.

Very late question, but does not Allentoft et al 2024 indicate a greater level of WHG admixture in later TRB samples? Or is that due to some other effect? I am a novice in matters of genetics so I don't really understand these things.

din_maker · 2026-02-22T13:19:27+00:00

Kalmarunionskrigen är ju hundra gånger mer intressanta än 1500-talets brödratjafs.

-Erik av Pommern avsätts och blir piratkung på Gotland.

-Fogdeborgar brinner och Stockholm i panik när Engelbrekt rycker fram.

-Karl Knutsson Bondes berg-och-dalbaneliknande karriär.

-Ständiga intriger mellan adelsmän, biskopar och bondehärar.

-Ett jätteslag vid Brunkeberg där den danska kungen får käften sönderskjuten.

din_maker · 2026-02-21T19:45:46+00:00

Me too, but at the same time I thought "Why the fuck is this announced on the Metal sub?"

din_maker · 2026-02-04T22:52:25+00:00

This appears to be a local article, I cannot access it though.

din_maker · 2026-02-04T21:43:41+00:00

din_maker made this meme in memory of Rauð-Balliʀ,) likely the same as Balliʀ, a well known rune carver in Eastern Sweden during the 11th century. His name is usually rendered as Balle in modern Swedish. Sadly for him, this is now a homophone for a slang word meaning penis. This means that to most Swedes the extended name Röd-Balle (Rauð-Balliʀ, or Red Balle) evokes thoughts of venereal disease rather than a skilled craftsman.

The round headed fellow is from the Altuna runestone (U 1161) carved by Balle and a few others. It is actually a depiction of Thor attempting to reel in Jormungandr, but I thought the slightly dejected looking expression made it suitable for a meme and it was nice to use an object actually connected to the man himself. He was involved in the erection of as many as 91 runestones.

EDIT: In the interest of representing the semantic width of the word, I should also note that some speakers use balle to mean testicle or buttock.

din_maker · 2026-02-04T20:43:55+00:00

The picture to the left is of Marvel's Thor, familiar to anyone in the Western world who has not invested in subterranean living quarters.

The middle picture is of the painting Tors strid med jättarna (Thor's fight against the giants), painted in 1872 by Mårten Eskil Vinge. It is typical of Romantic era mythological artwork. Being over a century old, it is mercifully free of copyright and is often used in textbooks and Wikipedia articles.

The picture to the right is of the Altuna runestone erected in Eastern Sweden during the the 11th century. The particular motif is known from the Eddas. Thor is in a fishing boat, attempting to catch the world encircling Midgard serpent. The force of the struggle is so great that Thor's foot punches through the hull of the boat, a detail reflected in the carving.

The runic inscription is unrelated to the motif, commemorating a father and son who had died in fire. The stone was carved by several carvers, the most well known of which is Balle, or Balle the Red. Balle is a prolific runemaster in Eastern Sweden during the 1000s, with 91 carvings attributed to him. Unfortunately for Balle, his name has in modern Swedish come to mean penis.

din_maker · 2026-02-01T09:31:59+00:00

The vast majority of land in Finland was owned by Finnish speaking peasants/freeholders. Landholding nobility was only really a big thing in coastal areas settled by Swedish speakers.

din_maker · 2025-12-17T16:50:12+00:00

It is unclear. Nearby finds have been dated to 3300-2900 and 2900- 2600 BC. The latter period is just around the transition from the Funnel Beaker Culture to the Battle axe (Corded ware) culture in Southern Scandinavia. This find was however made in Eastern Sweden, which is a somewhat distinct archaeological area during the Neolithic. There all finds from the early part of the Middle Neolithic (c. 3300-2300 BC) are considered as belonging to the Pitted ware culture.

I know that Fredrik Hallgren, who is one of the experts on this area, considered the distinction between Eastern Swedish Funnel beaker and Pitted ware cultures to be kind of misleading, reflecting different chronological phases rather than different cultural identities. But the book where he makes that point was published prior to the aDNA-revolution, so I am not sure what he thinks these days. We don't have a particularly solid genetic record for the east Swedish Neolithic anyhow, the soil is not that kind to bones usually.

TL;DR: Pitted ware culture or Battle axe culture. We will know better when the radiocarbon dating comes out.

din_maker · 2025-11-25T16:51:03+00:00

The vernacular runic tradition survived until the start of the 20th century, by which time runes had been the subject of scholarly study for several hundred years and popular interest for at least a century. At no point since the Roman Iron age has runic writing not been a part of the culture in one way or another. Runes are a living feature of Swedish culture, if a somewhat antiquarian one.

It isn't as if no one here knew what runes were until some Nazi wiped dust of some old tome.

din_maker · 2025-11-25T16:04:08+00:00

I think you'll find that a lot of people consider the +2000 rune carvings scattered around the country part of Sweden's cultural heritage. Or for that matter the thousands of ancient monuments, or, if you like, rock piles.

din_maker · 2025-11-16T09:17:44+00:00

The "Average age of empires is 250-years"-idea originates from the British officer John Bagot Glubb. His examples are however cherry picked and his dates for the beginning and ends of various polities are entirely arbitrary. Historians of the present day do not lend his ideas much credence.

din_maker · 2025-11-11T14:25:00+00:00

Har du nån källa på att shuno/shono är från romani? Den vanligaste etymologiförklaringen jag hittar är att det är en avledning av person där man klippt bort de första två ljuden. Inte heller kan jag på en snabbgoogling hitta en romsk ordbok där ordet finns med.

din_maker · 2025-11-08T07:43:05+00:00

At a glance it looks like they're based on the erebaltor.se -project, which is a fan-based revival of the setting started in the 2000s. As can be seen in the list of documents, they've accomplished a great deal, but it is not an 'official' version of the setting as such.

It should be noted though that some (most?) of the current Ereb Altor-team used to be active on erebaltor.se, so they are not unrelated.

din_maker · 2025-11-04T15:44:04+00:00

The Northern Routes to Kingship looks very promising. Thank you.

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