ABSTRACT
In Sweden there are no medieval sagas or other works describing the history or the social conditions of the late Viking period. What is known from this part of Scandinavia consists merely of a few foreign sources as Rimbert’s Vita Ansgarii and Adam of Bremen’s chronicle about the history of the Hamburg-Bremen diocese. On the other hand, there are some 3,000 runic inscriptions recorded from Sweden in the same period. Despite the fact that memorial stones with rather short and formulaic texts dominate this material, it offers a unique insight into Viking Age society and allows for investigations of different types. It is, for example, possible to trace horizontal bonds as the connections between a chieftain and his retainers, but also to map networks based on family relations and other types of horizontal bonds. The focus of this chapter is a large runestone from Turinge in Södermanland, commissioned by a family that probably represents the top level of Viking Age society in central Sweden in the late eleventh century. They were great landowners and east-travelers at the same time, and one of the members might even be identified with a person known from other historical sources.
