Qualla: Jelling stones

Jelling stones: Introduction

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nationalmuseet - National Museum of Denmark from Denmark, CC BY-SA 2.0. Every time a phone finds a pair of headphones, it invokes a Danish king who has been dead for a thousand years. The name Bluetooth was inspired in 1997 by a photograph of a runestone standing in the churchyard at Jelling, in central Jutland - the stone raised by Harald Bluetooth, the tenth-century ruler who bound quarrelling Danish territories into one kingdom. The stone is not a metaphor for consolidation. It is Harald saying so, in his own words, cut into granite by his own order.

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Image: Nationalmuseet - National Museum of Denmark from Denmark | CC BY-SA 2.0

Jelling stones: Two Stones in a Churchyard

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ MD, CC BY-SA 3.0. They stand between two enormous burial mounds, in front of a small whitewashed church, in a village that gives no other sign of having once been the centre of a kingdom. The smaller stone came first. King Gorm the Old raised it for his wife: King Gormr made these monuments in mem...

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Image: JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ MD | CC BY-SA 3.0

Jelling stones: Harald's Claim

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Casiopeia, CC BY-SA 2.0 de. Gorm's son answered his father's stone with something far larger, and far more political. King Haraldr ordered these monuments made in memory of Gormr, his father, and in memory of Thyrve, his mother; that Haraldr who won for himself all of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes C...

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Image: Casiopeia | CC BY-SA 2.0 de

Jelling stones: Denmark's Baptismal Certificate

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown artist, Public domain. In the 1930s the art historian Rudolf Broby-Johansen gave the large stone the name that stuck: Danmarks dabsattest, Denmark's baptismal certificate. Both stones carry the country's name - tanmaurk in the accusative on Harald's, tanmarkar in the genitive on Gorm's - and the pair a...

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Image: Unknown artist | Public domain

Jelling stones: They Were Painted

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Casiopeia, CC BY-SA 2.0 de. The grey we see is not what Harald commissioned. Specks of pigment survive in the carved surfaces, enough to show that the runes and the figures were originally picked out in strong colour, and a plaster cast made in 1955 for the Danish Church in London was painted accordingly - ...

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Image: Casiopeia | CC BY-SA 2.0 de

Jelling stones: GELWANE

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ajepbah, CC BY-SA 3.0. A thousand years outdoors took a toll. When UNESCO specialists inspected the stones on 15 November 2008 they found cracks opening and recommended moving them indoors or protecting them where they stood. Then, in February 2011, someone sprayed the word GELWANE in green paint acros...

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Image: Ajepbah | CC BY-SA 3.0