The Jelling stones: Denmark's birth certificate

In the heart of Jutland, beside a small white church and two great grassy mounds, stand two stones that the Danes regard as the founding document of their nation. They are the Jelling rune stones, carved in the tenth century by two rulers, father and son. Since 1994 the whole complex, with the mounds and the church, has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List, and today the stones are protected by climate-controlled glass cases.

Gorm's stone

The smaller stone was raised by King Gorm the Old, who died around the middle of the tenth century, in memory of his wife Thyra. The inscription, in long-branch runes, says that Gorm made this monument for Thyra, his wife, and describes her with a much-debated phrase, “Danmarkar bót”, which can be understood as the adornment or the salvation of Denmark. It is one of the oldest records of the country's very name on a Danish monument.

Gorm is the first king securely known in the dynasty that would rule Denmark down to the present day. His stone is plain, without images, and follows the traditional pattern of memorial inscriptions: who raised the monument, for whom, with what relationship. Thyra's name, by contrast, is surrounded by later legends that credit her with building a great frontier wall.

Harald's stone

The larger stone, a granite boulder of several tonnes shaped like an irregular pyramid, was carved for Gorm's son, Harald known as Bluetooth, around 965. The text commemorates his parents and then celebrates the king himself: “sá Haraldr es sér vann Danmǫrk alla ok Norveg”, that Harald who won for himself all Denmark and Norway, and who made the Danes Christian.

The three faces of the stone are like the pages of a book. One bears the main text, another a great beast, perhaps a lion, entwined in the coils of a serpent, the third the oldest depiction of Christ in Scandinavia, arms outstretched among plant interlace. Beneath the figures run the final words of the inscription. The stone was originally painted in bright colours, as traces of pigment and modern reproductions show.

A pagan and Christian site

The Jelling complex brings together the signs of two worlds. The north mound, excavated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, contained an empty wooden burial chamber, thought to have been Gorm's first grave. Beneath the church were found remains of older buildings and a grave with human bones, perhaps those of Gorm himself, moved to Christian ground by his converted son. Recent excavations have also revealed a large palisade and a ship-shaped stone setting.

Harald's baptism is related by the Saxon chronicler Widukind of Corvey, who credits it to a cleric named Poppo. The written sources and the stone thus agree on an essential fact: around 960 the Danish monarchy officially adopted Christianity. According to the story, Poppo proved the power of the new faith by carrying red-hot iron without being burned.

This is why the great Jelling stone is often called Denmark's baptismal certificate. It is also a masterpiece of Viking art in the so-called Mammen style, and its image of Christ appears today even in Danish passports. Few runic inscriptions have enjoyed so public and lasting a destiny. For the Danes, that stone is still a symbol of national identity today.