Carved in stone over 1,000 years ago, a king proclaims the unification and baptism of Denmark – the same king whose name is in every smartphone today.
In the Danish town of Jelling stand two rune stones that are among the most important monuments of the Viking Age. The larger of the two, raised around 965 by King Harald Bluetooth, is regarded as Denmark’s birth certificate.
In runes the stone proclaims that Harald ‘won all of Denmark and Norway for himself and made the Danes Christian’. On one side it bears the oldest image of Christ in Scandinavia, on the other a great beast fighting a serpent – paganism and Christianity side by side, an image of transition.
Harald united a fragmented land and introduced Christianity. The mighty burial mounds, the stone ship setting and the church of Jelling bear witness to this turning point. In 1994 the site became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Harald’s byname lives on today where you would least expect it: the wireless technology Bluetooth is named after him, and its logo is the bind-rune of his initials. We tell the whole story in our post on Bluetooth and Harald Bluetooth.