Yggdrasil · Humankind

Harald Bluetooth and the Jelling Monuments

A Danish king’s carved stone announces his conquests and the Danes’ new religion, as a public claim.

Myth and literature

The story

Direct evidence: an inscription on the stone itself states what the king wanted known.

At Jelling in Jutland two great burial mounds stand with a church between them and two rune stones beside it. The smaller stone was raised by King Gorm for his wife Thyra. The larger was raised by their son Harald, known as Bluetooth, in memory of his parents. It also says, in Harald’s own name, that he won all of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian.

One face of the stone shows a figure usually read as Christ. Another shows a beast wrapped in a snake. The name Denmark appears in the inscription. It is a message from a king to everyone who passed: this realm is one, it is mine, and it follows the new faith.

Myth and literature · Context

What we know, and what we do not

What is recorded: a king chose to carve, in stone and in public, that he had won two lands and made the Danes Christian. That is his claim, made for nobles, rivals and visitors as much as ordinary people. The stone is also a memorial to his parents.

What is not recorded: what farmers, sailors or women in Denmark believed. A king declaring a country Christian does not make everyone Christian overnight, and nothing here says the old gods were dropped in homes or on farms. The inscription does not describe the old religion at all. Some scholars see a likeness between the carved figure and the Odin who hangs on a tree in the poems, but that is one proposed reading, not settled. How complete the conquest of Norway was is likewise the king’s own statement, not independent evidence.

Historical evidence

The evidence

The Jelling monuments stand in Denmark and are on UNESCO’s World Heritage list, inscribed in 1994. They are two mounds, two rune stones and a church. The National Museum of Denmark dates the larger stone to about 965 and says Harald built a wooden church between the mounds, with a burial chamber under its floor. The museum suggests Harald may have reburied his father Gorm there. UNESCO’s description places the church around 960, when Harald brought Christianity to Denmark, as he proclaims on the larger stone. Wikipedia gives only the tenth century for the stones.

The stones are now kept under a climate-controlled glass case in Jelling.