Another sad story
Published: Fri, 06/05/15
Gripsholm Castle is located about 70 km West of Stockholm. Although the castle itself was built in the 16th century in the grounds are runestones dating from the 11th century. The stone designated S179 is not particularly large, about 1.5 metres tall and has a simple design of snake with no cross motif for once. The inscription states that the stone was raised by a mother named Tola in memory of her son Harald This Harald was the brother of Ingvar the far-travelled. The rest of the inscription suggests that these men sailed off to find their fortunes, fought in far places and died in a country far to the South called Serkland, probably present day Georgia. During the Viking period many Swedish men must have sailed in the hope of finding riches, got into fights in various places and some would not have made it home. What is remarkable about references to Ingvar and Serkland is that nearly thirty rune stones record this same
expedition. There are no definitive historical records of what happened but legend has it that out of a large fleet of ships only one returned. No one knows what happened to the rest and their crews. All we can be sure of is that if nearly thirty rune stones survive with references to this event then the total number who died and did not return must have been relatively huge. Many stones have been lost or destroyed over the centuries and only members of the elite had stones raised in their memory anyway.
The loss of life and corresponding grief must have been comparable to the impact of the first world war in European countries. Indeed in the UK thousands of standing stones have been raised to the fallen. I wonder how many of those will survive in a 1000 years time. I wonder if anyone will really understand why they were raised at all?
Anyway, this stone S179, you can see my picture and a translation of the inscription at http://www.iceandfire.org/sweden15.html
This stone and story it suggests does remind us of the risk of travelling abroad in search of treasure. However without courage to take risks life gets very dull and limited. Venetia and I gained a great deal from our trip to Sweden. I have posted a video of a talk I gave while there https://youtu.be/2fMTErhG1ug
There are opportunities for you to learn Stav if you are willing to travel to Somerset, tomorrow there are two seminars, self-defence in the morning and cudgel training in the afternoon. http://somersetstav.co.uk/sd.html Then in July the big one, a chance to learn from Ivar himself. and if you can’t make it in person I can send you video recordings of talks and training sessions, see for details.
regards
Graham