Pilgårds Stone

‘Bjartfánn staddu þæssi stæin Hægbjǫrn. Brǿðr Róðvísl, Øystæinn, Ívarr, es hafa stæina stadda aft Rafn suðr fyri Rufstæini, kvámu vítt í Æifur. Vífill bauð um.’
‘Hægbjǫrn placed this bright-painted stone. The brothers Róđvísl, Øystæin, Ívar, who have stones placed after Rafn south of Rufstæin, came from far and wide to Æifur. Vífil delegated [this to Hægbjǫrn](?).’

The Pilgårds Runestone (G 280) is notable for a particular place name, ‘Æifur,’ which matches the ‘Russian’ (ῥωσιστί) name of the Nenasytets (Ненасытец/Ненаситець) Rapids given in Constantine VII’s ‘De Administrando Imperio,’ a tenth century domestic and foreign policy document intended for Constantine’s son Romanos II. Constantine contrasts this name with the ‘Slavic’ (σκλαβιστί) name, ‘Neasit.’ The ‘Russian’ name is clearly the Norse name, and the ‘Slavic’ name is clearly a form of the name still in use.

I have taken ‘imuar’ to be an unusual spelling of ‘Ívarr,’ with the ‘m’ representing the nasal quality of the vowel.

Photo: G 280, Pilgårds by Wikimedia User:Berig, CC BY-SA 3.0 / Link