SOMETHING ABOUT THE MENTAL MAP OF THE VIKING AGE: UKRAINIAN LANDSCAPE IN THE SCANDINAVIAN RUNIC INSCRIPTIONS (OVERVIEW OF THE PILGÅRDS AND THE BEREZAN’ RUNESTONES)

Abstract

The main aim of the article is to investigate the text of the Pilgård’s runestone concerning the place name which are connected with Ukrainian landscape, and at the same time, understanding the role of Berezan’ Island in the trade communication is shaped by researching its rune inscription. The main purpose of research is to understand how fellows-in-trade in the Viking Age have perceived places and how they reflected their mental map in the inscriptions of runestones. The content analysis method became the principal idea of the research methodology. The research was carried out in two stages. The first stage involved the grouping of conceptual components into logical categories recorded in the runic inscriptions. The second stage involved examining the text on different contextual levels. The scientific novelty of the article is to investigate the geography information of runestones as the mental maps, which were connected with long-distance trade networks on the Eastern way, combining knowledge of travel routes extended to Ukrainian landscape, and how traders encountered and experienced it. The runestones show us something what the people have been pondering about before. The text on the stones are perceived as a common place for the development of the cultural experience, it attracts attention to the life of people and the cultural environment that made impact on the stone and where it was formed due to the trade activity of human beings. Understanding the scale of Scandinavian activities beyond the island Berezan' fosters the increasingly necessary knowledge to explain such term as felagi that is found on runestone. The inscriptions on runestones were fused the physical, humans and the cultural landscape into the mental map, which was comprehensible to a certain group of the Swedish fellows-in-trade. The Pilgårds and the Berezan’ runestones structured information about Ukrainian landscape and gave the evaluation of the purpose of a place.