The stones speak to us – and will become more understandable

Also see the slideshow at the end of the article.

The old picture stones on Gotland are special – not only because the motifs are beautiful – but also because it is almost exclusively on Gotland that the stones are found. A picture stone has chiseled motifs on one side of the stone. While runestones in Götaland and Svealand mainly communicate with text, the picture stones tell stories with illustrations. The Gotland picture stones are unique to the entire Germanic-speaking world during the first millennium. The continuity of the stones is also special. They were cut over a period of almost a thousand years, from the Migration Period in the 400s e.Kr. to the early Middle Ages in the 1100s.

Gotland as an important trading centre

This stone from Garda Bote shows a star in front of a horseman. This is unusual and is the only example in Germanic art from this time of a horseman following a star – but it is very common in Christian iconography.

The fact that the picture stones are found on the island Gotland is no coincidence. The bedrock of Gotland consists largely of limestone, which is a good material for carving pictures in. Another important reason is Gotland's location in the middle of the Baltic Sea, which made the island an important trading centre with long-distance contacts early on. In the wake of trade, prosperity was created on the island and the desire to show off success and achievements in the form of pictures. The picture stones provide evidence of long-distance contacts with other areas and cultures. The sculptors were inspired by Roman and Byzantine motifs. The earliest Gotland picture stones are based in Roman provinces. There are also Roman tombstones with almost exactly the same picture compositions.

The Gotland sculptors also reinterpreted the motifs from the Mediterranean countries according to their own perceptions of the world. The reclining crescent moon that appears on Roman tombstones became a boat, and the Christian symbols were loaded with a different meaning.

Project to digitize picture stone

At present, about 700 Gotland picture stones are known. To make them more accessible to researchers and the public, the project Ancient Images 2.0 – a digital edition of the Gotland picture stones – is underway. It started in 2019 and will end in 2024 and is part of the research programme Digarv, funded by the Swedish Research Council together with the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities and Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. The project is led by Stockholm University and is a collaboration with the Gotland Museum and the Swedish National Heritage Board.

The focus is on increasing accessibility, mainly by digitizing all Gotland's picture stones through 3D visualization. The researchers will also collect and digitize old notes, images and other information from various archives. The project will result in an interactive and freely accessible digital edition of the picture stones, where they are available as 3D models.

Lack of domestic written documents

Sigmund Oehrl at the stone Haugstajns on Gotland. Photo: Anders Andrén

Sigmund Oehrl is Professor of Archaeology at the Museum of Archaeology at the University of Stavanger and leads the project at Stockholm University.

"The Gotland picture stones are a unique source of pre-Christian Scandinavian culture and religion. There are no domestic written documents from this period. The stones are the way we can find out from the Norsemen themselves what their ideas were about the world they lived in and what they thought happened after death," says Sigmund Oehrl.

Other descriptions we have from this time period are written down by observers who came from outside, such as Roman writers. They may not have been to the Nordic countries themselves and they often had their own agenda. Or the stories are written down afterwards, like the Icelandic Edda. This means that these sources are not completely reliable.

The stones speak to us

Sigmund Oehrl describes the picture stones as a visual language. In the stones, people carved images of the world they lived in, and these images are preserved to this day. They give us glimpses of and serve as peepholes into our history.

Already as a language and archaeology student in Germany, Sigmund Oehrl became fascinated by the early Middle Ages and picture stones.

What fascinates you most about picture stones?

"Almost everything we know about myths, religion and worldview in the pre-Christian Nordic countries comes from the Old Icelandic writing tradition, that is, the Eddas, Skaldic poetry and the sagas. But they were only written down in Iceland in the Middle Ages, and we don't always know how old these stories really are. Often, there are copies made from copies that researchers have to rely on. However, the images engraved in the stones are the original documents. They are not interpretations made by others and they were not created centuries later.

The researchers are now trying to reconstruct the "language" found on the stones. It's not always easy. Some stones have been broken or been used for other purposes (see below) or the ravages of time have worn down so that the images are difficult to distinguish. On many stones, especially the oldest, the motifs are engraved only a few millimetres. This makes them difficult to distinguish to the naked eye, especially if they have been worn down by weather and wind, which is common with soft limestone.

New technology enables new studies

Technology that has come in recent decades has made it possible to find and study parts of the images that have hardly been possible to discover before. It is mainly photogrammetry, a process in which high-resolution 3D models can be created on the basis of series of digital photos. The advanced photogrammetry technology used in the project makes it possible to create 3D models with such high precision that they can be described as digital twins.
In the past, it was common to paint in the carvings on the stones to make the images more visible. Now it doesn't have to be done anymore. The new technique can distinguish carvings from the natural structure of the stone and create a three-dimensional image of the stone. That image can then be zoomed in, illuminated and rotated to be able to see the stone from different angles – and thus perhaps find new meanings of the images. Within the framework of the project, staff at Gotland's museum and its partner, the company Viospatia in Visby, have photographed and scanned picture stones, both at the museums in Stockholm and Visby and around Gotland.

The picture stones will be available to more people

Stone from Alskog Tjängvide showing a dead man who is received by Valkyrie in the afterlife. He sits on Odin's eight-legged horse Sleipnir.

The database will be ready by the end of 2024. By then, all approximately 700 known picture stones will be available with pictures, high-resolution 3D models and information in English about the stones. There will also be Swedish summaries for all stones. Users should be able to easily search for specific objects, stones in a particular area, or stones found in churches. It should also be possible to search for keywords such as "ship" or "woman" to see all the stones with these motifs.

Through the database, the picture stones become available in a way they have not been before. "Everyone is fascinated by the picture stones, there is interest all over the world. Therefore, our database should be open to everyone, both researchers and laypeople," says Sigmund Oehrl.

Many new picture stones discovered

The database will be an important tool for continued research on picture stones. But the project to build up the database has also generated new knowledge for the research. Sigmund Oehrl wants to highlight how much more material has become known during the course of the work. When the project started, about 600 picture stones were known. Today, there are about 700. The new technology used to photograph and scan the stones has also allowed researchers to distinguish details in the stones' images that they could not see before. In addition, the interpretation of all images will be at the center of his future research.

Reuse of picture stones

Sigmund Oehrl is leading another research project on Gotland's picture stones, Perceptions of a pagan past. Prehistoric spolia in medieval Scandinavian churches, with an emphasis on Gotland and is funded by the Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foundation. The focus of the project is on why these pagan stones came to be used in churches and what it says about the image the Gotlanders of the Middle Ages had about antiquity.

Digitization of Gotland's picture stones

The project Ancient Images 2.0 – a digital version of the Gotland picture stones started in 2019 and will run until 2024 as part of the research programme Digarv and is carried out at Stockholm University and Gotland Museum with the objectives to:
1. Digitize all Gotland's picture stones through 3D visualisation.
2. Collect and digitize literature, reports, early photographs and drawings, letters and other information stored in various archives.
3. Create an interactive and freely accessible digital edition of the image stones, aimed at both laymen and researchers. It should contain images of all the stones with texts, along with a 3D model.
4. Suggest new interpretations of the images based on the digital documentation. The research focuses on iconography, foreign influences and Scandinavian parallels, workshop traditions and the reuse of picture stones.
Read more about the project.