A Danish stone from the early 9th century carries two riddles at once: a symbol of three interlocking drinking-horns and a rare title – that of the þulr.
Some rune-stones are terse memorials, others small sensations. The Snoldelev stone from Zealand, carved in the early 9th century, belongs to the second sort. It carries two riddles at once: an enigmatic symbol of three interlocking drinking-horns and a rare, mysterious title. Hardly any other stone of the early Viking Age lets us look so deep into the spiritual world of heathen society – and leaves us guessing at just as much.
The most striking sign is the symbol of the three interlaced drinking-horns, penetrating one another in an even pattern. It is kin to the famous „valknut" and appears in similar form elsewhere too, for instance on the splendid Gotlandic picture stones. Drinking-horns were no mere tableware in the North: they stood at the centre of feast and cult – at the libation to the gods, at the solemn oath sworn over the filled horn, at the memorial meal for the dead.
What exactly the three horns meant we do not know for certain. They have been linked to the mead of poetry, to ritual drinking and again and again to the cult of Odin – after all, Odin is the god who stole the poet’s mead. But any clear-cut „explanation" goes beyond what the stone itself yields. The symbol keeps its secret.
More exciting still is the inscription. It names a Gunnvaldr, son of Hróaldr, þulr in Salhaugar. This word þulr is precious, for it is rarely met. A þulr was evidently a highly respected speaker of sacred knowledge – a keeper of mnemonic verses, genealogies and ritual formulas, perhaps a cult-leader or sage who at feasts recited the inherited lore. In a society without books, such a man was the living memory of his community.
Linguistically the word stands in telling company: it is related to þula (a rhymed mnemonic list) and even to Odin’s bynames Fjǫlnir and Fimbulþulr, „the great þulr". Knowledge and word were holy in the North, and whoever kept them stood close to the highest god, the lord of wisdom.
„Wise is he called who can ask and answer alike." — Hávamál 28, after Bellows
This verse from the Hávamál describes almost word for word what a þulr had to do: ask and answer, keep knowledge and pass it on. The Snoldelev stone thus gives us a rare, precious glimpse of a spiritual office in the heathen world – long before monasteries and scribes bound knowledge into books.
The Snoldelev stone is a good example of how much and how little a single monument can reveal. It proves for certain that the office of the þulr existed and that a symbol of three horns had a serious, ritual meaning. Yet the exact reading – Odin-sign? mead-symbol? – remains speculation, and in honesty one must say so. It is exactly this mix of firm evidence and open secret that makes such stones so appealing.
For us, rune-stones like this are a constant inspiration. They show that the people of the North, more than a thousand years ago, already had the wish to bind names, symbols and knowledge lastingly into stone – exactly what our own work is about. The Snoldelev stone is at heart a very old engraving with a very clear message: remember.
Runes · The Valknut · Mead & Drinking-Horn · Odin.
Snoldelev stone (DR 248), National Museum of Denmark; Danmarks runeindskrifter. Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology. Image: public-domain drawing (George Stephens), Wikimedia Commons.