GP 355 Sjonhem kyrka I

Context and Discovery
Bishop Georg Wallin is the first to mention the picture stone, which he investigated on 25 July 1744 (Wallin 1751). It was then lying in the churchyard, as was the stone GP 357 Sjonhem kyrka III. The stones GP 355 Sjonhem kyrka I, GP 356 Sjonhem kyrka II and GP 357 Sjonhem kyrka III all belonged to the same monument (GR I, p. 262). In 1801, C. G. G. Hilfeling visited Sjonhem on his third trip to Gotland and found the stone in the churchyard to the south of the church. However, he could not find GP 356 Sjonhem kyrka II and GP 357 Sjonhem kyrka III. It is mentioned again in 1826 by N. J. Ekdahl, as leaning against the southern churchyard wall. According to Gotlands runinskrifter, it was inside the church when Carl Säve studied the stone in 1852. On the initiative of M. Klintberg, the stone was transferred from the congregation in Sjonhem to Gotland Museum in 1895, together with GP 356 Sjonhem kyrka II (GR I, p. 263).

In a photo by Sven Söderberg in ATA, we see the stone leaning against the wall on the outside of a building and the inscription is painted white, except the horizontal lines at the neck of the stone. The whole carving is touched up with white chalk on a later occasion by Hugo Pipping, as seen in a photo by Pipping in the beginning of the 20th century, as well as in a photo by Faith-Ell in 1933. On a later photo by Harald Faith-Ell in 1937, the stone seems to be leaning against a wall beside a door, the inscription now painted black (ATA).

The nave and choir of the stone church were probably built in the late 12th century. The baptismal font is dated to the middle of the 12th century (Lundh 2019, p. 13).
LKÅ
GP 357 Sjonhem kyrka III
GP 356 Sjonhem kyrka II

Measurements, Material and Condition
Height 1.67 m, width at the base 1.06 m, width of the head 0.88 m, width at the neck 0.76 m. The maximum thickness is 0.14 m. The width of the runic ribbon is 7–8 cm. Light grey limestone.

The carving surface is flat and smooth. The surface is weathered, possibly also damaged by trampling. There is damage at the top of the stone causing the loss of part of the inscription (c. 6 runes and two word-dividers according to GR I, p. 265). Damage to the carving surface to the right in the head affected the upper and the right cross arm. At the base, both the left and the right corners are broken but were mended in recent times. Later, the substitutions were again removed. The damage to the top of the stone was recorded in Hilfeling’s drawing, but it is uncertain whether the cross was already damaged, although Hilfeling drew it complete. A crack crosses the runic inscription down to the right, but no part of the inscription has been lost. This crack can be seen on Pehr Arvid Säve’s drawing from 1852 but not on Hilfeling’s drawing from 1801 (GR I, p. 264). It is now filled in, sometime between Faith-Ell’s photo in 1937 and Bengt A. Lundberg’s photo in 1986.
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Description of Ornament and Images
The style of ornament is similar to the runestone style used in Uppland, with the body of the runic animal following the edge of the stone and meeting in the middle, tied together by a so-called Irish knot and a palmette leaf. The runic animal has a small head and slender tendrils, the latter ending in spiral volutes. Judging by the runic animal, the stone can be classified as belonging to style group Pr4 in the style-chronological system by Anne-Sofie Gräslund, indicating the date c. 1070–1100 (Gräslund 2006, 126). In addition to this, two horizontal stripes cross the neck of the stone, carrying the end of the inscription with the prayers. Standing on the lower of the horizontal text bands is a cross. This design with the runic animal, the horizontal text bands at the neck and the cross placed in the head of the stone is common to most of the late 11th-century Gotland picture stones, for example GP 361 Stenkumla kyrka I and GP 362 Stenkumla kyrka II. They can be regarded as runestones proper and are sometimes called ‘picture stone-shaped runestones’. Thorgunn Snædal included the stone in her group of runestones with picture-stone shape with Middle Scandinavian runestone style, 18 of which were treated by Snædal in her dissertation about language and chronology in the Gotlandic runic inscriptions. This in turn is a subgroup of her larger category of inscriptions from the Christianization period (Snaedal 2002, p. 67). She suggested that the style was established on Gotland around the middle of the 11th century as a result of closer contact with Sweden and the Mälar area (Snædal 2002, p. 240).

The stone belongs to Lindqvist’s Abschnitt E, in which instead of being adorned with interlace and knots, the edge border along the contour of the stone is used for a runic inscription. Lindqvist further remarks that the stones in this period have a peculiar mixture of old and new elements. The figures on the earlier picture stones are mostly replaced by runic ornament (Lindqvist 1941/1942 I, p. 122).

Another feature that is characteristic of Gotlandic runestones is the pitted terminals, i.e., drilled holes at the end of the branches of the runes. Some holes were drilled in the ornament lines as well. The holes vary in size; the largest has a diameter of 1 cm (Lindqvist 1941/1942 II, p. 111). This is a characteristic adornment also found on the weathervanes from Källunge and Söderala. According to Lindqvist, it is a metal technique with a wide distribution in contemporary Europe (Lindqvist 1941, p. 55). It is also found on early medieval stone crosses in Norway and Scotland. Greek crosslets with pitted terminals as seen on the Rogaland crosses can also be observed on earlier stone monuments in Argyll, Western Scotland (Crouwers 2019, p. 205).
LKÅ
GP 361 Stenkumla kyrka I
GP 362 Stenkumla kyrka II

Interpretation of the Imagery
No interpretation

Runic Context and Comments
The inscriptions of the three stones GP 355 Sjonhem kyrka I, GP 356 Sjonhem kyrka II and GP 357 Sjonhem kyrka III clearly indicate that they all belonged to the same monument, raised in memory of three brothers who died before their parents, and thus it qualifies as one of the monuments that Lindqvist called ‘Vielsteinmonumente’. See GP 361 Stenkumla kyrka I. The paired monuments often have been interpreted as churchyard monuments, with a gable stone standing in each end of the grave (Bäckvall 2015; Hagenfeldt/Palm 1996, p. 59; Ljung 2016). However, this is not only a pair monument, but a whole group of stones. Among other monument groups, we mention the older picture stone group at Buttle Änge with several stones (Andreeff 2012). In Scania, we find the Hunnestad stones, a group of eight stones including both runestones and picture stones (DR 282).

The inscription includes the only mention of Vallachia in a runic inscription, according to Klaus Düwel possibly pointing at the use of the trading route Weichsel-Bug-Dnjestr with Gotlanders as intermediaries (Düwel 1999, p. 577). Since the inscription mentions that Rodfos was betrayed by Wallachians on a voyage, this stone belongs to the traveler stones. Wallachians (blakumen) have been understood as a name for the Romanized people in present Rumania, the prehistoric Dacia (Jansson 1977, p. 65; GR I, p. 267) or Polovtsians, a Turkish nomadic tribe that governed the steppes between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea in the 11th and the 12th centuries (Pritsak 1981, p. 373; Snædal Brink/Jansson 1983, p. 432). Currently c. 170 ‘traveler stones’ are known, out of total of c. 2,500 runestones. The majority of the ‘traveller stones’ are found in central Sweden, but they are found in other parts of the country as well. The inscriptions on these ‘traveler stones’ mention a range of remote locations, such as Serkland (usually Muslim countries in general); Jerusalem; Langbardaland (Italy), and Greece (Byzantium), but also locations within Scandinavia, e.g., Haithabu, and Gotland (Jansson 1987, pp. 38–91; Larsson 1990; Jesch 2001; Zilmer 2006). Some inscriptions only mention the general directions east or west, and a few even mention that the deceased travelled both in the east and in the west. Several activities are mentioned in the inscriptions, such as commanding forces (U 112b and Sö 338), earning wealth (U 209), taking shares of gold (e.g., Sö 166, and Sö 163), and visiting Jerusalem (U 136) (Källström 2016, p. 173–5, 182). Sven B, F. Jansson found it most likely that Rodfos was on a merchant trip (Jansson 1977, p. 66).

The stone was 3D-scanned in 2008 as part of a research project at Stockholm University (Kitzler Åhfeldt 2013). The data was later included in a study to compare carving techniques on Gotland and the Swedish mainland. The results showed that the carving techniques were more similar during the late 11th century than before, indicating increased contact between Gotland and mainland carvers or perhaps even an influx of mainland carvers, as earlier suggested by Snædal (Kitzler Åhfeldt 2019, s. 106). According to Sven B. F. Jansson, the stones GP 356 (G 134) and GP 357 (G 135) most probably were carved by the same person (Jansson 1977, p. 65).
LKÅ
GP 356 Sjonhem kyrka II
GP 357 Sjonhem kyrka III
GP 361 Stenkumla kyrka I

Type and Dating
Type E. Mushroom or key-hole shape. The stone can be described as a runestone hewn into the traditional shape of a picture stone, or as a runic picture stone (Gustavson 2012, p. 107). Style group Pr4 according to the style-chronological system by Anne-Sofie Gräslund, points to a date c. 1070–1100 (Gräslund 2006, p. 126). This style is generally limited to stones on Öland, Gotland and Central Sweden, with some exceptions. A complication in dating is that the styles may not necessarily have the same dating on Gotland as in the Mälar area. The relevance of the style groups outside the Mälar area has been discussed earlier (Gräslund 2002, p. 146; Källström 2007, p. 68). However, it is an advantage here that some of the archaeological objects used for the chronological framework actually have been found on Gotland. This especially applies to the style groups Pr3 and Pr4 (Gräslund 1992, pp. 195–197; 2002). On the other hand, Thunmark-Nylén’s archaeological dating of Gotlandic finds stretches the runestone style into the middle of the 12th century. This results in a considerably later dating also of Gotlandic runestones with similar ornament than the generally accepted dating in Uppland and implies that the runestone style was in use longer on Gotland than in Uppland (Thunmark Nylén 1991, pp. 190–191). The discrepancy between runological and archaeological dating, however, is an old issue (Thunmark-Nylén 1991, p. 191; Gustavson 2012, p. 108, p. 111; Källström 2012, p. 121), which needs to be investigated more thoroughly than is possible here.
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References
Wallin 1751; Hilfeling 1801, Taf. 38; Liljegren 1833, L1592–1594; Nordin 1903, p. 153, Fig. 9; Noreen 1904, p. 495; Lindqvist 1941/1942 I, p. 122; II, p. 111; GR, G 134; Snædal Brink/Jansson 1983, pp. 429–430 Fig. 4.

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