At burial grounds and arable land : A landscape analysis of Uppland's runestones

Runestones are stones with rune carvings on them and were in Uppland mainly raised during the eleventh and early twelfth century. Much of the earlier research done on runestones has focused on their inscriptions and not as much on their placement in the landscape. The placement of runestones has of course also been studied, but not very thoroughly using modern methods, such as GIS. We know that runestones were in many cases multifunctional and could serve as grave stones, memorial monuments or boundary markers etc., and quite a few were raised by burial grounds, roads and other places where they would be seen by many. This essay aims to further explore the placement of runestones by doing a large-scale analysis of Uppland’s runestones’ relation to burial grounds, water and the adjacent lands growing conditions. The stones are in the study categorized after their ornamental style groups, which form a relative chronology, and those that have inscriptions mentioning bridges. The runestones are then compared to one another, based on the three variables earlier mentioned, to see if there are any patterns or differences between them