Pages: 225-231

The article is devoted to runic inscriptions on memorial stelae (late 10th — 11th centuries) mentioning Eastern Europe. In spite of a potentially high degree of reliability of this source, contemporaneous to the events described in it (military campaign, battle, trade trip), unintentional misrepresentation of a particular text is quite possible. The author of this paper refers to the study of Kristel Zilmer (applying the so-called “cautious interpretive strategy”, leaving questionable words without interpretation, but taking into account all the previously proposed alternatives), and on the basis of her findings re-evaluates the established in historiography “mental map” of Eastern Europe reflected in runic inscriptions, and its ethnogeographical nomenclature.

Keywords: Northwest of Eastern Europe, 10th—11th cc., runic inscriptions, memorial stelae, monuments of Old-Norse literacy, ethnogeography, topon

Information about author:

Tatjana Jackson (Moscow, Russian Federation). Doctor of Historical Sciences. Institute for World History, Russian Academy of Sciences. Leninsky Pr., 32a, Moscow, 119991, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected]