Ulfgeir the Nice - Order of the Laurel

Wilhelm and Viena raised this stone to praise Ulfgeir smith forge-son and leaf-wearer on whom Ivaldi Brok and Eitri smile. Olaf carved.

That’s it.

This is the stone being laid out by Olaf. The stone was drawn, then runes placed, then carved by hand, and then painted.

In all seriousness, it’s the shortest thing I’ve ever written for an SCA project. Olaf Haraldson carved these words into a runestone for Ulfgir. I had a maximum of 126 characters.

Yes. Characters.

Using runes, anything that was doubled would be reduced to one, so there’s a little play.

At Court when this was presented, I read a framework for it to give it context and say all the “court stuff” like the event and the date and such, because those are not part of this scroll. I’ll write that down here at some point, but it ended with, “AND THE STONE READ…” and I read the stone.

But there’s also a second story. Many Norse runestones list the carver (many, many) and it’s standard. Olaf does not do this typically, because Olaf is modest. However, I added it because it is more true to authentic practice. We disagreed and then compromised: “Olaf carved” would be on the back.

However, when the stone was laid out, Olaf sent me a message. It had never happened to him but there were…10 extra spaces. He’d measured and planned precisely (it’s stone after all) but these 10 spaces were just – there. Know what fits in 10 spaces?

Olaf carved.

The Norns like period practice. 😉

Lord Ulfgeirr Ragnarrson, also known as Ulfgar the Nice is a 9th century Viking. I started my research by reading through roughly half of the texts of Norse runestones until I found the ones that fit a specific pattern that started to feel “common” and that I could work with. They were all very brief and factual: “Bjôrn and Gerðarr had this stone raised in memory of their brothers Víkingr and Sigfastr. Balli carved.”

http://www.runesdb.eu/find-list/d/fa/q////6/f/7149/c/21d01df39edd50d0dc23a78cafa55e4e/

http://www.runesdb.eu/find-list/d/fa/q////6/f/4848/c/51d196db2c29b9672331d4de74b9bcb6/

Here are other sources I referenced:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rundata

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B6k_runestone

http://www.yorku.ca/inpar/language/English-Old_Norse.pdf

http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/ONMensNames.shtml

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_runes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyrby_Runestone

https://norse-mythology.net/brokkr-and-eitri-master-blacksmith-in-norse-mythology/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brokkr

http://www.thesauruslex.com/sprak/engrune.htm

http://www.runesdb.eu/find-list/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlevi_Runestone

http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~alvismal/4list.pdf

And here’s the ugly Google Doc that shows my process: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v45k0m_8WWrIruhY4RWJmSrNyzzipWbPQoNRk57aFZo/edit?usp=sharing