ABSTRACT
In the church of Forsa in the province of Hälsingland in north-eastern Sweden there has hung from ancient times a ring of iron, a foot in diameter and covered with some 200 runic characters that have been impressed into the metal by means of a chisel. The inscription has been interpreted as dealing with fines to the bishop when divine services had been illicitly cancelled. The word staff was taken to imply the bishop and the sequence lirþiR to be lærðir ‘learned men’, hence the Christian context and a dating of the ring to the twelfth century.
