Walking down a seemingly ordinary street, I spot the first rune stone with (to anybody but experts) unreadable lettering carved onto stone in a dragon-like pattern. According to a signboard it commemorates a Germanic trader who died in the 11th century. Remarkably enough it’s not hidden inside a museum but is in its natural state, where it’s been standing since the end of the Viking Age. It makes me feel as if time has stood almost still in Sigtuna, a mere 14 km from Sweden’s main airport (which is the municipality’s biggest employer).
Bordered on one side by a lake and with its back against a forested hill, Sigtuna is about as pretty as it gets, like a fairy-tale version of Scandinavia with its wood cottages and narrow alleys and scarce traffic. No wonder some German type decided to settle here in ancient times. I start my exploration at the tiny town’s even tinier tourist office and pick up the free map (available in multiple languages) of the rune stones to be checked off the list. There are lots of them and some can be tricky to find as they’re rather tucked away in backstreets.
Other than that minor issue, everything is within easy walking distance — like the minuscule museum (down the street from the tourist office) where I get an idea of the history of the town. The museum (which marks the spot where the king had his mansion) has its share of runes and not all are scribbled on stone. One notable local find is a copper box used to keep a scale set for weighing precious metals, on which an ominous runic verse states that whoever steals it will be ripped apart by a corpse-eating cuckoo bird. Terse messages such as this — usually about death — remain the only means to understand the Vikings’ views of life, as all the other records were written by their adversaries.
I stroll around the town, gawking at rune stones. The Vikings saw the writing skill as a mystic art: It amazed people how scratches on stone magically captured thoughts and preserved them for eternity. The word rune itself meant secret knowledge, and runic inscriptions can be found wherever the Vikings roamed, including as far away as Istanbul in Turkey. But of all the extant inscriptions, the greatest number — 3,000 — belongs to Sweden, and over 1,000 of these are found in the Uppland province around Sigtuna.
Several stones were erected by a foreign traders’ guild, which means that Sigtuna must have had a colony of alien businessmen for whom forming a guild was useful when it came to arm-twisting troublesome Viking customers. However, the prevalence of crosses on rune stones suggests that times were changing — the Vikings were no longer worshipping tribal gods. The Sigtuna area got its first bishop in the 1060s, whose archbishopric was centred in nearby Uppsala, where a church was built to replace the pagan sacrificial grove. The bishop’s successor was slain by pirates who burnt down Sigtuna in 1187, prompting the creation of a new capital, Stockholm.
My runic walkabout is made easier by the fact that Sigtuna has more than its fair share of cafés. I zoom in on Tant Brun (Laurentii gränd 3) in a 1600s building, where I enjoy a sumptuous creamy blueberry pie along with a strong café latte (SEK96/₹750). The café may not be as old as the Viking Age, but it takes me half the way back as it is done up in rustic medieval style with rough-hewn wooden furnishings and the waitresses are dressed like old-style maids — all befitting Sigtuna’s pedigree, I think to myself as I overhear two men at the next table discuss how to cheat on taxes. The rowdy Viking era may be over, but the natives are still as crooked. Afterwards, I discover that the local liquor shop sells mjöd (mead) — the honey wine that Vikings tippled on before beer was invented — and acquire a bottle (SEK75/₹560) as a souvenir.
With my appetite for history enhanced by coffee and mead, I push on to a nearby area called Runriket or the Realm of Runes. Apart from some 25 rune stones spread out in the landscape, including one in the Täby church wall commemorating a Viking who died in Italy, I make an interesting discovery. The parish church was decorated by Albertus Pîctor, a 15th-century artist who painted frescoes in many places around Stockholm. One of his images here, in a corner of the church staircase, depicts a zombie playing chess. It was spotted by director Ingmar Bergman and inspired his classic The Seventh Seal (1957), in which a knight plays chess against death.
By then, I’m thirsty like a Viking zombie and hop on to a train back to Stockholm, which terminates at Östra, a small railway station famous for its ancient beer hall, Järnvägsrestaurangen, which ought to be declared a historical monument of national importance. I’m quite dehydrated after all the walking and so I sample multiple big beers (SEK 70/₹525 each). The bill says: “Have a fantastic day!”
I burp Viking-style and think: This was a fantastic day.
Zac O’Yeah is a part-time travel writer and part-time detective novelist;
Email: zacnet@email.com