Snoldelev stone

Snoldelev Stone
Rundata ID	DR 248
Country	Denmark
Region	Ramsø
City/Village	Currently Copenhagen, originally Snoldelev
Produced	Viking Age
Runemaster	unknown
Text – Native
Gunwalds sten, sonaʀ Roalds, þulaʀ a Salhøgum.
Text – English
Gunnvaldr's stone, Hróaldr's son, reciter of Salhaugar
Other resources
Runestones – Runic alphabet Runology – Runestone styles

The Snoldelev Stone, listed as DR 248 in the Rundata catalog, is a 9th-century runestone that was originally located at Snoldelev, Ramsø, Denmark.

The Snoldelev Stone, which is 1.25 meters in height, is decorated with a design of three drinking horns interlocking as incomplete Borromean rings (similar to the Diane de Poitiers three crescents emblem). The triple horn motif has been compared to a triskelion, or to the valknut symbol, and since 2006 has been adopted as the official symbol of the Asatru Folk Assembly. The stone was first noted in 1810, and was turned over to the national Antiquities Commission in 1811. The runestone is now housed at the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The inscription on the Snoldelev Stone shows an early version of the Younger Futhark. Like the late Elder Futhark Björketorp Runestone, it uses an a-rune which has the same form as the h-rune has in the long-branch version of the younger futhark. This a-rune is transliterated with capital A below. The Snoldelev runestone also retains the elder futhark haglaz rune () for the h-phoneme and this is represented by capital H in the transliteration below. The last character in the runic text is damaged, but is clearly a , and represents the first use of this rune for an 'm' in Denmark. The text is arranged in two lines of different size. It has been suggested that this may have been done in imitation of Merovingian or Carolingian manuscripts, which have the first line in long slender characters with the following lines in shorter, stubbier text.

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