De dog i Grekland : Skandinaviska runstenar och grekiska färder

Sammanfattning: Scandinavia has a rich history of the raising of runestones, monuments in stone of varying sizes for honoring the fallen. Among these there exist a group of runestones that mention a land far away from the cold winds of the north, the land of the Byzantine Empire, stretching from the Balkans to the edge of Anatolia with Greece at its center. Scandinavia and the former Byzantine empire has a long history between them where many made their way down the eastern rivers of the Rus to finally reach the city of Constantinople or ‘Miklagard’ as the Scandinavians called it, the great city. Here in the vast empire of the Greeks many Scandinavians saw an opportunity for wealth and fortune. Many of these however did not return home, they died in Greece and for some of them a runestone was raised in their memory. These would form the so-called Greece runestones, a collection of 27 runestones which will be explored in this thesis. The travelers to Greece also left behind their own writings at places like the Hagia Sophia and the Piraeus Lion. Where with their own words they tell of their journey to this distant land, which will also be covered along with the Greece runestones. The aim of this thesis is to explore these writings to hopefully give a greater insight to the early medieval Scandinavian society and what would motivate so many to travel all the way to Greece. This together with an analysis of the import of byzantine coins to the baltic area will hopefully provide us with a better understanding of these motives and at what period these travels primarily took place.