GP 356 Sjonhem kyrka II

Context and Discovery
Bishop Georg Wallin was the first to mention the picture stone, which he investigated on 25 July 1744, together with GP 355 Sjonhem kyrka I (G 136) and GP 357 Sjonhem kyrka III (G 136) (Wallin 1751; GR I, p. 269). These three stones originally all belonged to the same monument (GR I, p. 262) and, basically, they share the same find and research history. When Wallin found this stone, GP 356, it was situated in the church floor in front of the stairs to the pulpit. In 1801, C. G. G. Hilfeling visited Sjonhem on his third trip to Gotland and documented GP 355, but he could not find this stone. Neither was it mentioned by N. J. Ekdahl 1826. Carl Säve (1859) mentioned that it had been removed from the floor and that it was still in the church, but he gave no details as to where. On the initiative of M. Klintberg, the stone was transferred from the congregation in Sjonhem to Gotland Museum in 1895, together with GP 355 Sjonhem kyrka I (GR I, p. 263, p. 269). Apart from the three runestones, we know of three other picture stones from Sjonhem parish that are of older types (A and B); GP 354, GP 358 and GP 359.

On a photo by 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. Judging by the appearance of the painting, the whole carving was touched up with white again on a later occasion by Pipping, as seen in a photo by Pipping, as well as in a photo by Faith-Ell in 1933. In a later photo by Faith-Ell in 1937, the stone seems to lean against a wall beside a door, with the inscription now painted black (ATA).
LKÅ
GP 355 Sjonhem kyrka I
GP 357 Sjonhem kyrka III
GP 354 Sjonhem Lilla Sojvide
GP0358
GP 359 Sjonhem Petsarve

Measurements, Material and Condition
Height 1.63 m, the height of the carving is 1.19 m. The height from the top to the lowest line of the carving would have been 1.26 m. The present width at the base is 1.06 m, but according to the reconstructed contour in the drawing by Olof Sörling, the original width at the base was c. 1.1 m. Width of the head 0.82 m, width at the neck 0.72 m. The maximum thickness is 0.19 m. The width of the runic ribbon is 5–7 cm. The carved lines are at the most 5 mm wide, with well-preserved tool marks visible in the base. Light grey limestone (Lindqvist, 1941/1942 II, p. 111; GR I, p. 269).

The carving surface above the root is flat and smooth, and it appears to have been polished. The back side is raw. The edges are perpendicular to the carving surface and levelled up to c. 13 cm, set apart from the raw back with oblique edges skråkanter (Lindqvist 1941/1942 II, p. 111). Originally, the stone had the same shape and size as GP 355, but it is heavily damaged on the left side and at the top. A large section of the inscriptions is thereby lost. According to Elias Wessén, the damage probably was caused by trimming the stone to fit it into the church floor – a kind of handling that Wessén found strange, since it must have been a beautiful slab (GR I, p. 269). This might have happened when the nave and chancel of the stone church were built, according to Lundh probably in the late 12th century (Lundh 2019, p. 13). The baptismal font is dated to the middle of the 12th century (Lundh 2019, p. 13). In several photos, e.g., by the turn of the 20th century by Pipping, from 1911 by Braun, from 1912 and 1922 by Hamner (ATA), and from 1933 and 1937 by Faith-Ell, the stone seems to be discoloured in two streaks reaching down from the top edge of the stone down to the cross. The streaks can still be discerned in a later photo by Gådefors (probably in 1962). The stone appears to have been cleaned sometime between Gådefors’ photo and 1982, when the streaks were only faintly discernable in photos by Lundberg.

In photos by Pipping, Söderberg and Braun (1911) as well as in a photo by Faith-Ell in 1933, we see the stone touched up with white chalk or some other substance. In a photo from 1937 by Faith-Ell, the carving was filled in with black (ATA). In 1962 in a photo by Gådefors, the stone lies on the ground, indicating that it was moved within the museum.
LKÅ
GP 355 Sjonhem kyrka I

Description of Ornament and Images
The ornament of GP 356 is nearly identical to GP 355, except some details in the tendrils protruding from the animals’ heads. 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, p. 126). In addition to this, there is one horizontal stripe crossing the neck of the stone, with runes explaining that the sponsors were the uncles of the deceased man. Standing on the horizontal text bands there 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 includes 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, s. 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).

Another feature that seems to be characteristic of Gotlandic runestones is the pitted terminals, i.e., drilled holes at the end of the bi-staffs of the runes. On this stone, there are several of these drilled holes, with a width up to 4–5 mm, in the ornament as well as in the runes (Lindqvist 1941/1942 II, p. 111). This is a characteristic adornment also found on the weathervanes from Källunge and Söderala (see GP 355 Sjonhem kyrka I). 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 355 Sjonhem kyrka I
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. This stone is raised to the memory of the second son, who died in uitau. Noreen interpreted this place name as Vindau, on the coast of Curonia, in between Domesnäs and Libau, an interpretation that gained support from Montelius, von Friesen and Jansson (GR I, p. 271; Jansson 1977; Snaedal 2002, p. 75; Jansson 1956, pp. 12, 14). Vindau is the present-day Ventspils in Latvia by the estuary of the river Venta (Jansson/Snædal Brink 1983, p. 432). Zilmer includes the stone in her discussion of traffic networks around Gotland (Zilmer 2006, p. 265). The stone thus belongs to the large group of so-called traveler-stones (see GP 355 Sjonhem kyrka I for more about these), about 20 odd of which concern travels in the Baltic Sea region.

As a monument made up of three stones, it qualifies as one of the monuments that Lindqvist called ‘Vielsteinmonumente’, further discussed in GP 361 Stenkumla kyrka I. However, this is not only a pair monument, but a whole group of stones (see GP 355) that clearly belong together. Wallin suggested that they had been raised together by a road or on a hill before any church was built in Sjonhem (GR I, p. 274). Later research rather tends to see this kind of monument of dressed stone as created for a church environment (Hagenfeldt/Palm 1996; Ljung 2016) (see churchyard monuments in GP 361 Stenkumla kyrka I (G 207)).

According to Sven B. F. Jansson, the stones GP 355 (G 134) and GP 356 (G 135) were most probably carved by the same person (Jansson 1977, p. 65). As the third stone in the monument, the now lost GP 357 (G 136), was signed by Dan and Botbjärn, it has been assumed that GP 355 and GP 356 were carved by Dan and Botbjärn as well (Wallin 1751; GR I, p. 272).

The inscription mentions two sisters and three brothers, and in addition four uncles. Birgit Sawyer interprets this as a case where two un-named sisters had to give precedence in matters of inheritance to the uncles of the dead men. However, Hailvi, the daughter of one of the deceased men mentioned on GP 357 (G 136) seems to have inherited. Sawyer indicates that this situation is similar to regulations in the Guta law (Sawyer 1991, p. 221).

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, p. 106).
LKÅ
GP 355 Sjonhem kyrka I
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, alternatively as a runic picture stone (Gustavson 2012, p. 107). The ornament can be classified as belonging to style group Pr4 according to the style-chronological system by Anne-Sofie Gräslund, indicating the date c. 1070–1100 AD (Gräslund 2006, p. 126; see also GP 355 for a discussion). This is in accordance with earlier research, where von Friesen indicated that the runestones from Sjonhem should be dated after c. 1050 but that half a century earlier was possible, and Noreen who in 1903 suggested a date to c. 1100 (GRI, p. 274).
LKÅ
GP 355 Sjonhem kyrka I

References
Wallin 1751; Hilfeling 1801, Taf. 38; Liljegren 1833, L1592–1594; Nordin 1903, p. 153, Fig. 9; Noreen, 1904, p. 495; Lindqvist 1941/1942 II, p. 111; GR I, G 134; Snædal Brink/Jansson 1983, pp. 429–430 Fig. 4.

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