Harald's stone
The line that declared Denmark, inside its glass case.
Rialfver at Dutch Wikipedia — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Alicudi — CC BY-SA 3.0 · AUTOR.4200 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Andrys Stienstra — CC BY-SA 4.0
A small village in central Jutland holding what Danes call **«Denmark's birth certificate»**. Between two huge burial mounds stand two stone blocks carved with runes. The smaller was raised by King **Gorm the Old** for his wife Thyra in the mid-tenth century. The larger was raised by his son **Harald Bluetooth** around 965, and carries a line saying he "**won for himself all Denmark and Norway, and made the Danes Christian**«. What matters about that line is that it is the **first written appearance of the name "Denmark»** as a single political unit — a declaration of statehood, carved in stone a thousand years ago. On its other face is the oldest depiction of Christ in Scandinavia. Note: **Harald Bluetooth** is the same king the **Bluetooth** technology is named after, and its symbol is his two runic initials overlaid — because it unites different devices as he united tribes. Today the stones stand inside **glass cases** protecting them from the weather, the whole site is UNESCO-listed, and there is an excellent modern visitor centre.
The line that declared Denmark, inside its glass case.
Huge earthworks you can climb, with a view over the site.
Harald's two runic initials, the technology's logo today.
Gormsgade 23, Jelling, about 66 km south-west of Aarhus
Because the engineers who developed it were looking for a placeholder. In the 1990s Sweden's **Ericsson**, Finland's **Nokia** and **Intel** were working on a single wireless standard to unify incompatible communication systems. One engineer proposed the name **Harald Bluetooth**, because he had unified the scattered tribes of Denmark and Norway under one rule — a direct analogy for what the technology does to devices. The name was meant to hold only until a commercial one was agreed, and it stuck. The familiar logo is not an abstract shape but **the runes H and B overlaid**. The nickname «Bluetooth» probably came from a dead, dark-coloured tooth.
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