6 June 2025 The Future is the Product of the Past

An inscription written in both runic and Latin script on a church wall in Denmark turned out to be still a legally significant promissory note

An inscription in both runic and Latin script on a church wall in Denmark turned out to be legally valid proof of debt dating back 800 years.

According to Via Ritzau, the inscription in Runic and Latin script on the wall of the Sender Asmindrup church was discovered more than a century ago. It is located near the town of Holbaek, on the eastern Danish island of Zealand.

The inscription has two lines of text. The top line is written in Old Danish runes and was deciphered in 1909. It says, “Toke took silver on loan from Ragnhild.” Scholars were unable to decipher the bottom line because it was written in both runes and Latin letters in an idiosyncratic manner.

Only now the experts were able to read the second line of the text, which allowed them to identify this inscription as a legally valid receipt of the existence of debt 800 years ago.

The National Museum’s scribe researcher and runologist Lisbeth Imer has succeeded in decoding the text in collaboration with Anders Leegaard Knudsen, who is a senior editor at Diplomatarium Danicum – Denmark’s Kingdom Letters, which publishes documents from the Middle Ages.

Photo: Frederikke Reimer, National Museum
Photo: Frederikke Reimer, National Museum

The translation of the second line reads: “2. May in the year of salvation 1210.” According to Lisbeth Ymer, this means that the date Tocke borrowed from Ragnhild was clearly documented. And this already makes the registration a document that still has legal force.

“It is unique in the Danish context and rare internationally,” says Lisbeth Imer.

There are only three similar examples: a road use contract on a parish church on Gotland, Sweden, a land sale on a wall in St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, Ukraine, and a debt case judgment in the church of Saint Panteleimon in Galich, Russia.

Corresponding legal documents are typically only preserved on parchment and from the very highest social strata – often only because they are found preserved in a younger copy. The new discovery shows that there was a widespread writing culture in the Middle Ages.

“Until now, we have had almost no knowledge of how agreements were made, or to what extent writing was used. Our knowledge of it has, so to speak, been in the dark, and there have been only a few and scattered testimonies about the use of writing. The inscription in Sønder Asmindrup shows that written agreements were made among what we must believe were ordinary farmers at an early stage in the Middle Ages – we simply did not know that before,” says Lisbeth Imer.

Photo: Frederikke Reimer, National Museum
Photo: Frederikke Reimer, National Museum

It’s also a unique testament to how commoners in a rural parish crafted legal contracts comparable to the kind of work done by professional scribes for the elites.

At court, people usually wrote in Latin and with letters, while church inscriptions are mainly written in the mother tongue and with runes. And where the king’s documents almost all have to do with the state’s interests, the inscription in Sønder Asmindrup deals with ordinary farmers out in the countryside.

“Precisely that makes it so interesting, because it shows that writing was probably more used and widespread than we have otherwise thought. The promissory note is a serious use of writing, it wasn’t just a name scrawled on the wall for fun. It shows that a fairly advanced use of writing also took place out in the countryside, and it is not something we have seen such good examples of before,” says Lisbeth Imer.

Inscriptions on church walls are not unusual in themselves. In about 50 churches in the Old Danish area (incl. Scania) there are about 200 individual inscriptions that have been scratched into the lime plaster on the wall.

Presumably, there have been similar proofs of debt on several Danish church walls, but when they were plastered over in connection with the Reformation, many of the inscriptions have been lost – or are still hidden under the plaster.

Related Articles

Archaeologists Use Song to Unveil the Legendary End of West Africa’s Kaabu Kingdom

19 March 2025

19 March 2025

As the archaeological discoveries at Kansala, located in present-day Guinea-Bissau, reveal the tangible remnants of the once-mighty Kaabu Kingdom, the...

Archaeologists have found a fort that the Romans built to protect their silver mines, complete with wooden spikes

23 February 2023

23 February 2023

Archaeologists have discovered wooden defenses surrounding an ancient Roman military base for the first time in Bad Ems, western Germany....

Archaeologists Discovered a Mysterious Ancient Bone Floor in Alkmaar, the Netherlands

16 December 2024

16 December 2024

Archaeologists found a part of a floor made of animal bones in Alkmaar, North Holland, the Netherlands. Experts are intrigued...

Exciting discoveries at Accana Mound: 3,250-year-old seal belonging to Hittite prince and Akkadian cuneiform texts discovered

19 November 2021

19 November 2021

A 3250-year-old seal of the Hittite prince and a 3400-year-old cuneiform tablet was found in Accana Höyük (Mound) in the...

Hittite Royal Seal Warns ‘Whoever Breaks This Will Die’

7 July 2024

7 July 2024

During the excavations in Kırıkkale, a cuneiform seal used by the royal family during the Hittite Empire was unearthed. The...

Smoke archeology finds evidence Humans visited Nerja Cave for 40,000 Years

26 April 2023

26 April 2023

A new study by a team from the University of Córdoba reveals that Nerja is the European cave with the...

A 2000-year-old bronze military diploma was discovered in Turkey’s Perre ancient city

2 January 2022

2 January 2022

During excavations in the ancient city of Perre, located in the southeastern Turkish province of Adiyaman, archaeologists uncovered a bronze...

1700-year-old weaving workshop discovered in southeast Turkey

4 December 2021

4 December 2021

Excavations carried out in the ancient city of Perre in the southeastern province of Adıyaman have unearthed a 1,700-year-old weaving...

Archaeologists identify a sunken Nabataean temple dedicated to the God Dusares at Pozzuoli

12 April 2023

12 April 2023

Off the coast of Pozzuoli on the Phlegrean Peninsula in Campania, Italy, underwater archaeologists have identified a sunken Nabataeans temple...

Ice Age turtle finds near Magdeburg point to canned food from the Stone Age

2 May 2024

2 May 2024

Experts have recovered around 50,000-year-old turtle shell fragments from the Barleben-Adamsee gravel pit near Magdeburg. The turtles could have been...

A New Hypothesis Tries to Explain What Triggers People’s Big Brains

14 March 2021

14 March 2021

The big brain is the decisive feature of our species. Not only are they the most complex organs in the...

For the first time in Turkish history, a gold belt buckle depicted the face of a Göktürk Khagan found

19 December 2023

19 December 2023

A social complex (Külliye) and new artifacts from the Western Gokturk period were discovered in Kazakhstan. Among these items, a...

The Latest Surprises Revealed by Investigations Inside the Tomb of Cerberus in Giugliano

24 July 2024

24 July 2024

The latest surprise revealed by investigations at the Tomb of Cerberus in Giugliano: The remains of a corpse covered with...

Turkey’s Urartian Altıntepe Castle transforms into open museum

25 May 2022

25 May 2022

Altıntepe Castle, one of the most important centers of the Urartians and the Eastern Roman Empire, is now set to...

The Iremir Mound illuminates the pre-Urartian period in East Van

27 July 2021

27 July 2021

Archaeological findings unearthed in the excavations carried out at the İremir Mound in the Gürpınar district of Van, in eastern...