Viking-Age Gotland: Picture Stones, Silver Hoards and Harbours

Viking-Age Gotland was a limestone island in the middle of the Baltic that grew rich on the eastern trade routes. Its soil has given up more than 700 finds of silver and gold and about 168,000 coins, two-thirds of all Viking-Age silver coins found in Sweden, along with hundreds of carved picture stones and harbours such as Paviken.

Most of what people repeat about Gotland online comes from tourist brochures and recycled lists. This guide goes back to the primary material instead: the one surviving manuscript of the Guta saga, the museum records of the picture stones, the runic inscriptions as Rundata prints them, and the excavation reports from the hoards and harbours. Where the sources disagree or run out, we say so.

Where is Gotland, and why did it matter in the Viking Age?

Gotland is the largest island in the Baltic Sea, and the county covers about 3,140 square kilometres. It lies roughly 60 miles (about 97 km) off the coast of southern mainland Sweden. That position is the whole story. A ship leaving the Swedish coast for the Gulf of Finland, the Gulf of Riga or the southern Baltic could put in at Gotland on the way, and the island's farmers took a share of almost everything that passed.

Look at it on our interactive Viking world map and the logic is obvious: Gotland sits between Scandinavia and the river mouths that led east into Russia. Much of the silver that came back along those rivers was Arabic, with English and German coins mixed in, and a remarkable share of it ended up buried in Gotland farmyards. If you want the wider picture of how that commerce worked, our guide to Vikings as traders covers the mainland markets too.

The Guta saga: Gotland's own origin story

Gotland is one of the few places in the Norse world that wrote down its own history. The Guta saga, edited and translated by Christine Peel for the Viking Society (1999), survives in a single manuscript, B 64 in the National Library of Sweden, copied around 1350. It fills eight leaves after the Gotlandic law code. The title is modern; it was given by the scholar Carl Säve. When the text was first composed is disputed: Läffler argued for shortly after 1220, Pipping for about 1318.

Thielvar, Hafthi and the three sons

The saga opens with a line in Old Gutnish: "Gutland hitti fyrsti madr thann, sum Thieluar hit", the first man to find Gotland was called Thielvar. The island was so bewitched that it sank by day and rose at night, until Thielvar brought fire to it. After that it never sank again.

Thielvar's son Hafthi married a woman named Hvitastjerna. On their first night together she dreamed of three snakes coiled in her womb. The dream foretold three sons, Guti, Graipr and Gunfiaun, and the island was divided among them: Graipr took the north, Gunfiaun the south and Guti the middle. Later Gotlandic administration really did divide the island into thirds, which probably shaped the tale.

The great emigration east

As the population grew, the saga says, the land could not feed everyone. Lots were cast and every third person was sent away. The exiles went first to Fårö, then to Dagö, where the saga claims a fortification "still to be seen" (Peel notes there is no existing evidence for one), and from there up the river Dvina, through Russia, all the way to Grikland, the Byzantine Empire.

That journey is legend, not a travel record, but it is a legend that knows the real route. Gotlanders did travel the eastern rivers, as the runestones below show, and Scandinavians later served the Byzantine emperors in the Varangian Guard.

Sacrifice, the Swedish treaty and the conversion

The saga is frank about the old religion. People sacrificed their sons and daughters, cattle, food and ale. The whole island together held the highest sacrifice, with human victims, while each third held its own lesser one.

It also explains how Gotland came under the Swedish king without being conquered. A man called Avair Strabain of Alva negotiated a treaty: Gotland paid 60 marks of silver a year, 40 to the king and 20 to the jarl, and in return the king owed them protection, and Gotlanders could travel and trade in Sweden without paying toll.

Christianity came with St Olaf. Driven out of Norway, the saga says, he put into the harbour of Akergarn, and a local man, Ormika of Hejnum, gave him twelve yearling rams. Olaf gave Ormika two round drinking vessels and a battle-axe in return. Ormika accepted the faith and built an oratory where Akergarn church now stands, and Olaf went on east to Jaroslav in Novgorod. Peel thinks Olaf "actually did visit Gotland at least once", but suspects the story may be a peg on which to hang the conversion account.

The saga then names Botair of Akebäck, whose first church at Kulstäde was burned; his second, at Vi, survived thanks to his father-in-law Likkair Snielli and became the first church on Gotland allowed to stand. Whether any of this is history, Peel writes, cannot be proved either way.

Gotland's picture stones

No other part of Scandinavia carved stones like these. The Gotlandic Picture Stones catalogue lists several hundred of them, tall limestone slabs cut into a keyhole shape and covered with ships, riders, warriors and spirals. Current research dates the big Type C/D stones roughly to between the 8th and 10th centuries. Most carry no runes at all; they tell their stories in pictures alone.

Stora Hammars I

Stora Hammars I (GP 253) in Lärbro parish is the stone most people picture when they think of the type. It stood with four other tall picture stones and three cairns in a group known as the Daggängsmonumentet; the cairns contained animal bones and charcoal, but no burials are documented. The stone is 391 cm high and 162 cm wide, divided into six image fields, with no runes.

Read from the top, the fields show armed men, a tethered horse, then a crowded scene with two trees, a figure in what looks like a noose, an "altar", four swordsmen and three interlocked triangular rings, the knot now called the valknut. Below come a ship with armed men and a woman raising her hand, a fallen man under a horse with a bird of prey above, and at the bottom a large ship under sail. The catalogue says the central scene "probably depicts a burial or a human sacrifice".

What the whole stone means is argued over. Sune Lindqvist read one of its scenes as the Hildr legend, the endless battle of Hedin and Högni; Karl Hauck and Anders Andrén proposed a Völsung reading instead. Its date is just as open, with proposals running from about 700 (Lindqvist) to 790 to 840 (Eshleman) and the 10th century (Varenius). Since 1923 it has stood in the outdoor exhibition of the Bunge Museum in northern Gotland, deposited there by the Swedish History Museum after islanders objected to it being taken to Stockholm.

Tängelgårda

Tängelgårda, also in Lärbro, gave its name to a group of stones (GP 258 to 261) that turn up in almost every book on the subject. The public catalogue record for Tängelgårda I is still an empty entry, so we will not describe its scenes from second-hand retellings. What is documented is that the Swedish History Museum holds a Tängelgårda picture stone fragment, acquired in 1870 from Tängelgården in Lärbro and dated broadly to 550 to 1100.

Tjängvide I and Ardre VIII: Sleipnir on stone

The two most famous Gotland stones in Stockholm come from the same workshop. Tjängvide I in Alskog parish was found in 1844 by the farmer Johan Tjängvide and his brother while they were digging a potato cellar; it had been reused in the foundation of a medieval house. The museum bought it in 1869 for 22 riksdaler. It is 174 cm high and, unusually, carries runes: someone "raised the stone in memory of Hjorulfr, his brother", in an inscription dated to the second half of the 10th century. Its eight-legged horse was the Swedish History Museum's logo for years.

Ardre VIII turned up in 1900 under the choir floor of Ardre church during restoration, together with seven other stones. It is 230 cm wide, has no runes and dates to the 9th or 10th century. Among its scenes are a horseman on an eight-legged horse riding towards a hall, a woman holding out a drinking horn, a ship, a smithy and a five-headed figure. The catalogue says the horse "probably is Sleipnir" and that the rider is either Odin himself or a fallen warrior on his way to Valhalla. Our article on Sleipnir, Odin's eight-legged horse follows the same image through the written myths. The two stones now stand side by side in the Swedish History Museum, on the stairs leading to the Gold Room.

Runestones and the road east

Gotland also has runic inscriptions too, and a handful of them are the best evidence we have that Gotlanders really did go where the Guta saga sends its exiles.

Pilgårds (G 280): "far and wide in Eifor"

The Pilgårds stone (G 280) from Boge parish is a quartzite boulder now in Gotlands Museum, dated to the late 10th century or around 1000. It was raised in memory of Hrafn, south of Rofstein, and says: "They came far and wide in Eifor." Peel suggests, carefully, that Eifor (Aifur in normalised Old Norse) "is possible" as the fourth and largest of the Dnieper rapids named by the Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus. If so, this is a Gotland family remembering men who had travelled as far as the Dnieper rapids. The crews who rowed those rivers are also the likely source of the name Rus, as we explain in our piece on the Norse rowing origin of the name Rus.

Sjonhem (G 134 to 136): three sons, three deaths

At Sjonhem church a couple named Hrodvisl and Hrodelfr raised a stone for each of their three sons. The one for Hrodfuss, G 134, reads: "Wallachians betrayed him on a voyage. May God help Hrodfuss' soul. May God betray those who betrayed him." It is dated 1000 to 1150. G 135, from the same monument, remembers a son who "died at Vindey"; G 136 remembers one who "died at home" and left a daughter.

Timans (G 216): Greece, Jerusalem, Iceland, Serkland

The oddest item is not a stone at all. The Timans inscription (G 216) from Roma parish is cut on a whetstone of about 1050 to 1100 and lists four far-off places: Greece, Jerusalem, Iceland and Serkland, the Norse name for the Muslim lands. Peel points out it is the only inscription found on Gotland that mentions Grikland.

Gotland's silver hoards

The scale is extraordinary. According to the Gotlands Museum Treasure Chamber, the island has produced more than 700 finds of silver and gold, most of them from the Viking Age, and about 168,000 coins. A later count by Jonsson (2009) puts the coins at 168,600.

Why so much buried silver? Nobody has a single answer. In a 1993 paper, Mats Burström looked at almost 400 Gotland hoards and noted that most were deposited around 900 to 1100 close to farmsteads, not hidden out in the wilds. He argued they may have been bridewealth, property set aside within the family, rather than panic burials in wartime. Even the total is disputed: Carlsson (1983) estimated that Gotland might once have held 8,000 hoards, while Östergren (1989) put it at no more than 2,000.

The Spillings hoard

Spillings, in Othem parish near the bay of Boge on the north-east coast, produced the largest Viking-Age silver treasure ever found. The landowner reported coins in autumn 1998. On 16 July 1999 a TV4 crew was filming at the site. Only a few pieces of melted bronze turned up while the cameras ran, but shortly after the crew left the first hoard was found, and the last came to light a week later. A full excavation followed the year after. In the end there were three hoards, buried inside a large early Viking Age house. Gotlands Museum thinks the silver was probably kept in cloth bags; the Swedish History Museum reports the remains of a small wooden box and, for the bronze hoard, a spruce chest.

The Swedish History Museum's account of the world's largest Viking treasure breaks it down. Hoard 1 held more than 5,000 coins and 178 arm rings, just over 25 kg. Hoard 2 held more than 9,000 coins and about 340 arm rings, around 41 kg. Hoard 3 was bronze. Gotlands Museum gives the totals as 67 kg of silver, 25 kg of bronze and 14,300 coins. That is over 500 silver arm rings in two deposits, wealth worn on the arm, the same idea behind today's Viking arm rings.

The coins are mostly Arabic. Jan Peder Lamm's report on Spillings notes that the latest coins date to the 870s, among the coins classified so far. You can see it in the Treasure Chamber at Gotlands Museum in Visby.

Stora Velinge

Stora Velinge in Buttle parish is a name that appears in many lists of Gotland treasures, often with confident figures attached. The records we could check are thinner. A Swedish heritage photo record dates the find to 12 October 1936, at the edge of a gravel pit next to the grave Buttle 8:1, and a Gotlands Museum record shows it entered the Swedish History Museum as inventory no. 21612 and was lent to Gotlands Fornsal from 26 May to 30 September 1937. We could not confirm its full contents or dating from a primary source, so we are not repeating the numbers that circulate online.

Viking harbours on Gotland

All that silver had to come ashore somewhere. Gotland's trade was spread over many harbours and trading places along its coasts, among them Paviken, Fröjel and Visby, rather than concentrated in one town.

Paviken

Paviken lies on the west coast in the Västergarn area, on a sea inlet that has since been cut off from the Baltic. It was found in 1963 by phosphate mapping and excavated from 1967 to 1973 under Per Lundström. Jan Peder Lamm's 1980 note in Fornvännen quotes Lundström's summary of the results: a site of about 15,000 square metres, of which only 1,000 square metres were dug, yielding more than 10,000 objects. Three activities stand out: shipbuilding and repair, trade, and craft. The site was in use from the 700s to about 1000, busiest in the 900s.

The trading side shows in the small finds. Erik Sperber's study of weights from Paviken counts 40 weights of bronze or lead among the thousands of objects, the kind used to weigh out silver in a deal.

Fröjel (Ridanäs)

Further south on the west coast, Ridanäs at Fröjel was a port of trade used from the 7th to the 11th century. Dan Carlsson excavated the harbour and trading place from 1987 to 1990. A 2014 isotope study by Emily Peschel looked at the people buried in its two Viking-Age graveyards, more than 80 individuals in all, and found that only four of the 60 tested had grown up somewhere other than Gotland. The people buried there were overwhelmingly local.

The Swedish heritage register entry for Fröjel adds one strange detail: in 1998 an area of 40 by 10 metres was excavated and about 40 skeletons came up, all women and a couple of children, dated by radiocarbon and jewellery to the 10th and 11th centuries.

Where to see Viking Gotland today

Most of the material in this article can be seen on the island or in Stockholm.

• Fornsalen, Gotlands Museum, Strandgatan 14, Visby. Gotland's oldest museum of cultural history. The Picture Stone Hall holds the island's own collection of stones, and the Treasure Chamber displays the Spillings hoard.
• Bunge Museum, northern Gotland. Stora Hammars I stands in its outdoor exhibition.
• Swedish History Museum, Stockholm. Tjängvide I and Ardre VIII stand together on the stairs to the Gold Room.
• Visby itself is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Hanseatic Town of Visby, inscribed in 1995. Its walls and churches are medieval and come after the Viking Age though Visby grew rich on Baltic trade.
• Paviken and Fröjel are landscapes rather than museums. There is little to see above ground, but standing at Paviken makes it clear why ships came there.

Viking-Age Gotland, FAQ

Was Gotland part of Sweden in the Viking Age?

Not in the modern sense. According to the Guta saga, Gotland kept its own general assembly, the gutnalþing, and made a treaty with the Swedish king, paying 60 marks of silver a year in return for his protection and toll-free travel in Sweden.

Why are there so many silver hoards on Gotland?

Gotland sat on the route between Scandinavia and the eastern rivers, so silver from the Islamic world passed through it. Most hoards were buried near farms between about 900 and 1100. Researchers have suggested bridewealth or family property rather than wartime panic, but there is no single accepted explanation.

What is the largest Viking hoard ever found?

The Spillings hoard from Othem parish, found in 1999. Gotlands Museum gives 67 kg of silver, 25 kg of bronze and 14,300 coins, mostly Arabic, with more than 500 silver arm rings across its two silver deposits.

Where can I see Gotland picture stones?

In the Picture Stone Hall at Fornsalen (Gotlands Museum) in Visby, at the Bunge Museum outdoor exhibition (Stora Hammars I), and at the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm (Tjängvide I and Ardre VIII).

What does the Guta saga say about Gotland's origins?

It says Gotland was found by Thielvar and sank every day until he brought fire to it. His son Hafthi and Hafthi's wife Hvitastjerna had three sons, Guti, Graipr and Gunfiaun, who divided the island into three parts. The saga survives in one manuscript from around 1350.

Did Gotlanders reach Byzantium?

Probably some did, though the evidence is thin. The Guta saga sends its emigrants up the Dvina to Grikland, the Byzantine Empire, and the Timans inscription (G 216) names Greece among the places it lists. The Pilgårds stone (G 280) remembers men who travelled "far and wide in Eifor", possibly a rapid on the Dnieper.