Women's history just got richer
By Mindy Weisberger, CNN
More than 1,000 years ago, carvers in what is now Denmark set their chisels to rock to etch runestones — monuments to Viking leaders naming their deeds and achievements. Two groups of runestones mention a woman named Thyra, and new analysis of the carvings suggests that the runes on both sets of stones were inscribed by the same artisan and refer to the same woman: a Viking queen of considerable power.
Researchers from Denmark and Sweden used 3D scans to analyze carvings on the runestones, finding telltale clues that marked the individual style of the person who carved them. That carver’s repeated mention of Thyra’s name — a rare occurrence for Viking-era women — suggested that Thyra was a powerful sovereign who likely played a pivotal role in the birth of the Danish realm, the scientists reported Wednesday in the journal Antiquity.
“To learn more about the rune-carver and those named on the stone is fascinating,” said Dr. Katherine Cross, a lecturer at York St. John University in the UK who researches and teaches the history of early medieval northern Europe. She was not involved in the study.
“We can only understand early medieval sources once we can think about who made them and why,” Cross told CNN in an email.
One set of runes came from a pair of monuments known as the Jelling stones, erected in the town of Jelling around 965. The larger Jelling stone is often referred to as “Denmark’s birth certificate,” as it’s the first monument to name the land as its people pivoted to Christianity, according to the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen.
Both Jelling runestones also named a royal figure: Queen Thyra, mother of then-reigning King Harald Bluetooth. The smaller stone was raised in her honor by her husband (and Harald’s father) King Gorm, calling her “Denmark’s strength/salvation” (or “Denmark’s adornment,” depending on the translation, the researchers noted in the study). Harald commissioned the larger stone, to honor both of his royal parents.
In another set of four Viking-era monuments, known collectively as the Bække-Læborg group, two runestones mention a woman named Thyra. Those stones are associated with a carver named Ravnunge-Tue, but experts disagreed on whether that Thyra was Harald’s mother, said lead study author Dr. Lisbeth Imer, a curator and senior researcher at the National Museum of Denmark specializing in the study of runes and ancient inscriptions.
Before the new investigation, it was unknown who had carved the Jelling stones. Confirming that their carver was Ravnunge-Tue would strengthen the connection between the Jelling and Bække-Læborg runestones, Imer told CNN in an email.
“Then it is much more reasonable to suggest that it was in fact the same Thyra,” she said.
A question of style
Some details in ancient runestones that indicate a carver’s individual style are visible to a trained expert’s eye, such as the language or the basic shape of the runes. Other details are harder to detect, Imer said.
“What you cannot see with the naked eye is the carving technique,” she said.
To get a closer look at the carvings, the researchers took scans of the stones and created 3D digital models, then measured the runes’ grooves with a software tool that weighed variables such as angle, depth and cutting rhythm. Together, these variables can create a unique profile for a carver.
“Every rune carver develops his own motor skill and holds the tools in a certain angle, strikes with a certain strength,” Imer said. “The motor skill is individual and other individuals cannot copy that.”
When the researchers compared runes from Jelling 2 (the larger of the two Jelling stones) and the Læborg stone from the Bække-Læborg group, they found striking similarities, such as height of the runes, straightness of the main staves and length and placement of rune branches.
“In the Læborg and Jelling inscriptions you can follow the cutting rhythm of Ravnunge-Tue as one deep stroke of the chisel followed by two not so deep ones: DAK, dak-dak, DAK, dak-dak,” Imer said via email. “It is ALMOST like hearing the heartbeat of a person that lived so long ago.”
Jelling 1 was more eroded, so its markings were harder to analyze. But if the Læborg runestone was Ravnunge-Tue’s handiwork, Jelling 2 was likely his as well, Imer said. It would mean that the Queen Thyra mentioned twice in the Bække-Læborg group — on Læborg and on the stone Bække 1 — was the same person commemorated on the Jelling stones, the study authors concluded.
In recent years, archaeologists have revised prior interpretations of Viking warrior burials as exclusively male, finding that Viking women were fighters, too. The new findings add to the picture of influential Viking women holding prominent roles in statecraft as well as on the battlefield.
“This research highlights how Viking-Age women wielded power through political authority and patronage, not just violence,” Cross said.
What’s more, the fact that Thyra is mentioned on four runestones offers strong evidence of her importance, Imer added. Fewer than 10 runestones in Denmark from the pre-Christian era mention women at all — and four of those are of Queen Thyra.
“Runestones in Denmark were mostly erected in honour of men, but Thyra is commemorated on more runestones than any other person in Viking Age Denmark,” Imer said. “She must have held extreme power and social position.”
Mindy Weisberger is a science writer and media producer whose work has appeared in Live Science, Scientific American and How It Works magazine.
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Rory Gilmore Book List:
- [ ] 1984 by George Orwell
- [ ] The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
- [ ] Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
- [ ] The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
- [ ] An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
- [ ] Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
- [ ] Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- [ ] Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
- [ ] Archidamian War by Donald Kagan
- [ ] The Art of Fiction by Henry James
- [ ] The Art of War by Sun Tzu
- [ ] As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
- [ ] Atonement by Ian McEwan
- [ ] Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
- [ ] The Awakening by Kate Chopin
- [ ] Babe by Dick King-Smith
- [ ] Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi
- [ ] Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
- [ ] Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
- [ ] The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
- [ ] Beloved by Toni Morrison
- [ ] Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney
- [ ] The Bhagava Gita
- [ ] The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Built a Village in the Forest, and Saved 1,200 Jews by Peter Duffy
- [ ] Bitch in Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel
- [ ] A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays by Mary McCarthy
- [ ] Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- [ ] Brick Lane by Monica Ali
- [ ] Bridgadoon by Alan Jay Lerner
- [ ] Candide by Voltaire
- [ ] The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer - well some of it
- [ ] Carrie by Stephen King
- [ ] Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- [ ] The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
- [ ] Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
- [ ] The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman
- [ ] Christine by Stephen King
- [ ] A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
- [ ] A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
- [ ] The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
- [ ] The Collected Short Stories by Eudora Welty - some
- [ ] The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty by Eudora Welty
- [ ] A Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare
- [ ] Complete Novels by Dawn Powell
- [ ] The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton
- [ ] Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker
- [ ] A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
- [ ] The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas père
- [ ] Cousin Bette by Honor’e de Balzac
- [ ] Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- [ ] The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
- [ ] The Crucible by Arthur Miller
- [ ] Cujo by Stephen King
- [ ] The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
- [ ] Daisy Miller by Henry James
- [ ] Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
- [ ] David and Lisa by Dr Theodore Issac Rubin M.D
- [ ] David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
- [ ] The Da Vinci -Code by Dan Brown
- [ ] Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
- [ ] Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- [ ] Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
- [ ] Deenie by Judy Blume
- [ ] The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
- [ ] The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Nikki Sixx
- [ ] The Divine Comedy by Dante
- [ ] The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
- [ ] Don Quijote by Cervantes
- [ ] Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhrv
- [ ] Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
- [ ] Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems by Edgar Allan Poe - again some
- [ ] Eleanor Roosevelt by Blanche Wiesen Cook
- [ ] The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
- [ ] Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn
- [ ] Eloise by Kay Thompson
- [ ] Emily the Strange by Roger Reger
- [ ] Emma by Jane Austen
- [ ] Empire Falls by Richard Russo
- [ ] Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective by Donald J. Sobol
- [ ] Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
- [ ] Ethics by Spinoza
- [ ] Europe through the Back Door, 2003 by Rick Steves
- [ ] Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
- [ ] Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
- [ ] Extravagance by Gary Krist
- [ ] Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- [ ] Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore
- [ ] The Fall of the Athenian Empire by Donald Kagan
- [ ] Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World by Greg Critser
- [ ] Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
- [ ] The Fellowship of the Ring: Book 1 of The Lord of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien
- [ ] Fiddler on the Roof by Joseph Stein
- [ ] The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
- [ ] Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce
- [ ] Fletch by Gregory McDonald
- [ ] Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
- [ ] The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
- [ ] The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
- [ ] Frankenstein by Mary Shelley - never finished
- [ ] Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
- [ ] Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers
- [ ] Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
- [ ] Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
- [ ] George W. Bushism: The Slate Book of the Accidental Wit and Wisdom of our 43rd President by Jacob Weisberg
- [ ] Gidget by Fredrick Kohner
- [ ] Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
- [ ] The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
- [ ] The Godfather: Book 1 by Mario Puzo
- [ ] The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy – started and not finished
- [ ] Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Alvin Granowsky
- [ ] Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
- [ ] The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford
- [ ] The Gospel According to Judy Bloom - this isn’t a real book!
- [ ] The Graduate by Charles Webb
- [ ] The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- [ ] The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- [ ] Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- [ ] The Group by Mary McCarthy
- [ ] Hamlet by William Shakespeare
- [ ] Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling
- [ ] Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling
- [ ] A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
- [ ] Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
- [ ] Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry
- [ ] Henry IV, part I by William Shakespeare
- [ ] Henry IV, part II by William Shakespeare
- [ ] Henry V by William Shakespeare
- [ ] High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
- [ ] The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
- [ ] Holidays on Ice: Stories by David Sedaris
- [ ] The Holy Barbarians by Lawrence Lipton
- [ ] House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III (Lpr)
- [ ] The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
- [ ] How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer
- [ ] How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss
- [ ] How the Light Gets in by M. J. Hyland
- [ ] Howl by Allen Gingsburg
- [ ] The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
- [ ] The Iliad by Homer
- [ ] I’m with the Band by Pamela des Barres
- [ ] In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
- [ ] Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
- [ ] Iron Weed by William J. Kennedy
- [ ] It Takes a Village by Hillary Clinton
- [ ] Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
- [ ] The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
- [ ] Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
- [ ] The Jumping Frog by Mark Twain
- [ ] The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
- [ ] Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito
- [ ] The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander
- [ ] The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
- [ ] Lady Chatterleys’ Lover by D. H. Lawrence
- [ ] The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000 by Gore Vidal
- [ ] Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
- [ ] The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield
- [ ] Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
- [ ] Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
- [ ] Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken
- [ ] Life of Pi by Yann Martel
- [ ] The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
- [ ] Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
- [ ] The Little Locksmith by Katharine Butler Hathaway
- [ ] The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen
- [ ] Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
- [ ] Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton
- [ ] Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- [ ] The Lottery: And Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
- [ ] The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
- [ ] The Love Story by Erich Segal
- [ ] Macbeth by William Shakespeare
- [ ] Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
- [ ] The Manticore by Robertson Davies
- [ ] Marathon Man by William Goldman
- [ ] The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
- [ ] Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
- [ ] Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman by William Tecumseh Sherman
- [ ] Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
- [ ] The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer
- [ ] Mencken’s Chrestomathy by H. R. Mencken
- [ ] The Merry Wives of Windsro by William Shakespeare
- [ ] The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
- [ ] Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
- [ ] The Miracle Worker by William Gibson
- [ ] Moby Dick by Herman Melville
- [ ] The Mojo Collection: The Ultimate Music Companion by Jim Irvin
- [ ] Moliere: A Biography by Hobart Chatfield Taylor
- [ ] A Monetary History of the United States by Milton Friedman
- [ ] Monsieur Proust by Celeste Albaret
- [ ] A Month Of Sundays: Searching For The Spirit And My Sister by Julie Mars
- [ ] A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
- [ ] Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
- [ ] Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
- [ ] My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and It’s Aftermath by Seymour M. Hersh
- [ ] My Life as Author and Editor by H. R. Mencken
- [ ] My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru by Tim Guest
- [ ] My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
- [ ] The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
- [ ] The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
- [ ] The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
- [ ] The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin
- [ ] Nervous System: Or, Losing My Mind in Literature by Jan Lars Jensen
- [ ] New Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson
- [ ] The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay
- [ ] Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
- [ ] Night by Elie Wiesel
- [ ] Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
- [ ] The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism by William E. Cain, Laurie A. Finke, Barbara E. Johnson, John P. McGowan
- [ ] Novels 1930-1942: Dance Night/Come Back to Sorrento, Turn, Magic Wheel/Angels on Toast/A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell
- [ ] Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski
- [ ] Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
- [ ] Old School by Tobias Wolff
- [ ] Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
- [ ] On the Road by Jack Kerouac
- [ ] One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
- [ ] One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
- [ ] One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- [ ] The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life by Amy Tan
- [ ] Oracle Night by Paul Auster
- [ ] Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
- [ ] Othello by Shakespeare
- [ ] Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
- [ ] The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan
- [ ] Out of Africa by Isac Dineson
- [ ] The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
- [ ] A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
- [ ] The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition by Donald Kagan
- [ ] The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
- [ ] Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
- [ ] The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
- [ ] Pigs at the Trough by Arianna Huffington
- [ ] Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
- [ ] Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
- [ ] The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
- [ ] The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
- [ ] The Portable Nietzche by Fredrich Nietzche
- [ ] The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill by Ron Suskind
- [ ] Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- [ ] Property by Valerie Martin
- [ ] Pushkin: A Biography by T. J. Binyon
- [ ] Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
- [ ] Quattrocento by James Mckean
- [ ] A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall
- [ ] Rapunzel by Grimm Brothers
- [ ] The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
- [ ] The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
- [ ] Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
- [ ] Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
- [ ] Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
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