Yggdrasil · Humankind

Tóki the Smith: A Memorial to Freedom

A Danish rune stone raised by a smith for the man who freed him from slavery.

Myth and literature

The story

Direct evidence: a rune stone in Jutland names a smith, Tóki, and the man who gave him his freedom.

The Hørning stone, catalogued as DR 58, was found by a farmer in 1849 between Jelling and Aarhus and now stands in Moesgaard Museum, just south of Aarhus. Its inscription says that Tóki the smith raised the stone in memory of Þorgísl, son of Guðmundr. Þorgísl had given Tóki something and also his freedom. The word usually translated as “gold” is uncertain, so what the gift was cannot be stated with confidence. The mention of freedom is why the stone is read as the memorial of a man who had been enslaved and was set free. That is nearly all it says. The stone is one of the few places where a person who was once held as a slave speaks in his own name, and the freedom is the one thing the carving remembers about the man who gave it.

Myth and literature · Context

What we know, and what we do not

What is recorded: the name and trade of the man who raised the stone, the name and father of the man he remembers, and that this man gave him freedom, with something else whose meaning is uncertain. The carving was meant to be seen: freedom was worth putting in stone.

What is not recorded: how Tóki came to be enslaved, where he was born, how many years he was unfree, what he made as a smith, and whether the gift came at Þorgísl’s death or earlier. The stone does not say how Þorgísl treated him, and it should not be read as a warm story about the owner. Enslavement is the condition the memorial answers to, and the stone tells us only its ending.

Historical evidence

The evidence

The evidence is a single rune stone, Danish runic inscription DR 58, the Hørning stone, kept at Moesgaard Museum near Aarhus. The two web pages consulted give its text only in translation: Tóki the smith raised the stone in memory of Þorgísl, Guðmundr’s son, who gave him “gold(?) and freedom”. Both mark the word for gold as doubtful. One of them, a museum-style image archive entry, describes the stone as the work of an emancipated slave honouring the man who freed him, and notes that the page gives no date beyond “Viking Age”. No dating from a runological study is offered here. The reading as a freed slave rests on the word for freedom in the text.