Ingvar Stones, Part II: Sylten

‘Þorfreðr/Þorfríðr résti æftir Ásgǿt ok Gǿta, sunu sína, stén þæssi. Hann Gǿti ændaðis í Ingvars hælfningi.’
‘Thorfređ/Thorfríđ raised after Ásgǿt and Gǿti, his/her sons, this stone. He Gǿti met his end in Ingvar’s host.’

The furthest south of the runestones concerning Ingvar’s journey to ‘Serkland,’ the Sylten Runestone (Ög 155) is located in the Norrköping Municipality, along the border of ‘Svealand’ and ‘Götaland.’ It should be no surprise then that both sons have the ethnonym ‘Göt’ in their names.

Runic spelling offers a challenge in reading the name of the runestone’s raiser, with the runes spelling out both the masculine name ‘Thorfređ’ and the feminine name ‘Thorfríđ,’ meaning ‘Thor-peace’ and ‘Thor-beauty’ respectively.

I have chosen to normalize this inscription with monophthongs ‘ǿ’ and ‘é’ over diphthongs ‘au’ and ‘æi’ because of the monophthongal spelling of ‘stin’ ‘askut’ and ‘kut,’ which stand next to the diphthongal spellings of ‘auk’ and ‘kauta.’

Photo: Ög 155, Sylten (new) by Wikimedia User:Berig, CC BY-SA 3.0 / Link