The royal centre in central Jutland where Gorm the Old and Harald Bluetooth raised the two Jelling stones, the larger of which records the conversion of the Danes about 965.
Jelling lies in central Jutland, north-west of Vejle. The site holds two of the largest burial mounds in Denmark, a stone church, and between them the two carved stones that make the place famous. It was the monumental centre of the dynasty that ruled Denmark at the point where it becomes visible in written history.
Excavation has shown the monuments to be parts of one deliberate scheme rather than an accumulation. Together they represent a royal statement, made in stone and earth at enormous cost, about a kingdom and a religion that were both new.
The smaller stone was raised by Gorm the Old for his wife: "King Gorm made these monuments in memory of Thyra, his wife, Denmark's adornment." It is the first use of the name Denmark on a monument inside the country.
The larger stone was raised by their son Harald about 965 and carries a longer claim: "King Harald ordered these monuments made in memory of Gorm, his father, and in memory of Thyra, his mother; that Harald who won for himself all of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian." Its three faces carry the runes, a great beast entwined with a serpent, and a figure of Christ with arms outstretched and bound in interlace rather than nailed to a cross — the earliest image of Christ in Scandinavian art, and one that fits him into the visual language of Norse carving rather than replacing it.
The north mound contained a timber burial chamber whose planks have been dated by dendrochronology to 958 or 959, the right date for Gorm's death. The chamber was richly furnished but the body was gone, removed in antiquity rather than robbed.
The likely explanation was found in 1978 beneath the church, where a grave containing the bones of a middle-aged man of high status was excavated. The usual reading is that Harald, having converted, had his father taken out of a pagan mound and reburied in consecrated ground inside the first church at Jelling — an act that matches the claim on his stone exactly. The south mound, despite its size, contained no burial at all and may have been a platform or a monument.
Geophysical survey and excavation since 2006 have shown that the mounds and stones stood inside a huge rhomboid palisade, roughly 360 metres on each side and enclosing about twelve and a half hectares, with large timber halls inside it.
A stone ship setting nearly 350 metres long ran through the complex, its lines partly buried by the later mounds. The scale of the works — the timber alone required a substantial forest — is the clearest measure available of what Harald Bluetooth could command, and it supports rather than contradicts the boast carved on his stone.
Harald was driven out by his son Sweyn Forkbeard and died about 986. The dynasty he consolidated went on to rule England under Sweyn and Cnut the Great, and Jelling itself declined into an ordinary parish once the royal centre moved to Roskilde and elsewhere.
The site was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994, and the stones were enclosed in climate-controlled glass casings in 2011 after weathering and lichen had begun to erode the carving. Harald's byname was borrowed in 1997 for the Bluetooth wireless standard, whose logo combines his initials in runes.