Ragnvaldr and Fastvé: Remembering a Mother

Direct evidence: a surviving inscription names a son, his mother and her father, and says where she died.

On a large boulder beside a path in Ed, in Uppland, Ragnvaldr had runes cut in memory of his mother Fastvé. The text calls her the daughter of Ónæmr and says she died in Eið. It ends with a short prayer asking God to help her spirit, so the stone is Christian in tone. A second side says that Ragnvaldr himself had the runes made, and that he had been in Greece, as leader of the retinue. Nothing more is told about Fastvé: how she died, how old she was, or what became of her family. The stone gives a mother her name and her father’s name, and her son’s grief at her death in a place we cannot now identify. It is not evidence about any afterlife beyond the prayer cut into it.

What is recorded: that Fastvé’s son marked her death with a public monument, that her father’s name was Ónæmr, that she died in a place called Eið, and that she was commended to God. A rare name like Ónæmr also appears on U 328 and U 336, and Wikipedia says the three are held to name the same man. That is an inference across stones, not something U 112 states.

What is not recorded: where Eið was, when Fastvé died, her age or cause of death, or what her family’s standing was. Nothing from other stones that name a Ragnvaldr is added here. The stone gives no view of what happens after death.