Norge - Pinch Stones. Proposal Stones, Prodigious Stones and Penis Stones in Norway - Part 1

Stone Lifting in Norway

Inspired by Ryan Stewart, Nic Whalen and Mark Prows' recently stone lifting tour of Sweden (and Iceland before that), I got all distracted from my Skye research and spent far too long going down the rabbit hole of Norway. You could probably throw a dart at a map of the world, blindfolded, and still hit a country that has a history of stone lifting to some degree, and Norway seemed a likely candidate for having a good number with Sweden clearly having a rich stone history. This blog isn't intended to be a complete document on all of Norway and stones - I wouldn't ever claim to be able to write such, nor is it huge amount of work. It's what I managed to find with a handful of spare hours and a few tussles with Google translate. On a similar vein, I won't sadly be able to make a trip to Norway any time too soon, so don't plan on doing any more follow up work to this post in the near future. If anyone else knows more or plans to do further research/go find and lift some of these stones that would be awesome.

Your geographical grounding

We start with a look at "Sterke-Nils", or Nils Olvason Langedal as he was born, and as his nickname suggests, he was a rather strong fellow. Born in 1720 and living to the ripe age of 80, A mild mannered man, known for his absurd feats of strength, and for the relevancy of this post, two stones in particular. For those interested in bulking, it is said he was bottled on horse milk as a child, so Tormund eat your heart out. His other (okay I'm being silly) claim to fame is winning a 2014 poll on Norway's "best" unknown sporting heroes.

Born in Seljord, this is where we travel for the first stone, lying at the Landstad monument outside Seljord Church. I don't believe this stone has a name (which only saddens me a little), and is just typically refered to as "Steinen Sterke-Nils", or the Stone of Strong-Nils. Pictured below!

As the inscription in the second photo shows, it weighs a whopping 570kg, and as far as I've been able to find was lifted so that two shepherds could sit better/more comfortably - quite the exertion for two lazy shepherds! (No offence intended on the off chance there's a shepherd reading this). I can't quite tell if it's set into the concrete base it sits on or not, and unsurprisingly the photos you can find of people posing pretending to lift it, don't include any where they manage to break it from the ground in any shape. Svend Karlsen, of WSM 2001 fame, a well known believer in "Viking Power!" isn't a believer in the Viking power of Sterke-Nils however, and in interviews has expressed his disbelief in this particular feat of strength.

N:B. I've also found this video, which is about Sterke-Nils Steinen, however the audio quality isn't good enough for online transcribing services to transcribe for me to pop into a translator, so if someone else happens to speak Norwegian and is reading this, or knows someone who does, a translation would be awesome! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAYz6c89x0U

Sterke-Nils lays claim to another stone, and whilst his first may be up there for heaviest stone "lifted" (perhaps alongside Ultach Gillean a' Bealaich? I would imagine Sigurd's stone in Sweden as discovered by the aforementioned trio might be the heaviest stone actually "liftable" that we know of), his second stone is equally as unique. Known as the Klypelyftstein, which translates to "Pinch Lift Stone", a phrase sure to set any grip-aficionado's salivating, it sits at in the Kviteseid village hall and is lifted yearly as part of the village festival. As you can probably imagine, this is a stone that is lifted with a "pinch grip" using one hand, whereby a good lift is successfully breaking it from the ground.

The Klypelyftstein

The history of this stone, as far as I can tell, is simply that Sterke-Nils was able to lift it with his doubtlessly ham-sized hands, and weighing in at 75kg, it has since become a test for others to emulate. Below are some photos of people emulating the feat as part of the annual village festivities.

The photos above come from this  page where a local TV network invited people to try lift it 2010 as part of a TV show. The claim at the time was that it was unlifted since Sterke-Nils, even by the great Norweigan weightlifter Torkel Ravandal (see below), who it has been claimed performed a "hip lift" with the 570kg steinen by way of a chain, in 1973. I've found a second source which  Of the thirty men who attempted it for the TV show, ten completed it.

This guy deadlifted 885lb, did a 484lb deadlift with one arm and once lifted a car off a lady involved in an accident nearby to one of his shows. I'm pretty sure he could pinch lift this pinch lift stone.

We'll leave behind the men of legend, and save our next character for part two perhaps (oh dear, this brief excursion isn't turning out very brief), and take a look at more "normal" people stone lifting. If there was ever an oxymoron, normal and stone lifting is it. Nothing could probably be less abnormal than a pivot to talking about sacred white penis stones, fertility cults and lifting stones.

The blog site "Brute Norse" opened my eyes to this, and if you're the kind of person who actually reads my full posts, you'll probably enjoy it too, but if you don't have the time right now I'll give you the cliff notes. "Sacred White Stones" are a form of religious sculpture from mid to late Nordic Iron Age(300-600AD), often phallic in shape. A Norweigan phenomen with similar stones in Sweden being called grave orbs, and there's some debate over whether these are all phallic in shape or shaped like loaves of bread, or some mix. It seems that some of these stones through the years have made their way into lifting culture as being required to lift by young men to prove their status as a man, and thus worthy of marriage

Rock hard.

The Brute Norse blog refers to another blog for more information on the lifting stones, a blog by a Norwegian historian and archaeologist, Frans-Arne H. Stylegar. The blog dives into the difference between sacred white stones, grave orbs from Sweden and bread baskets, and is again worth a read. 

This blog mentions a number of stones specifically, some sacred white stones re-purposed, others specific special lifting stones. There's an example of a stone from Kronoberg County, described as a manhood test that a wishful man had to lift with straight arms for his betrothed-to-be to answer "yes". The straight arm distinction is interestingly close to the "Ultach" style common in the Western Isles of Scotland. A Phallic stone from Ålhus became a lifting stone, after having a busy few years moving from it's original location to a stone wall, than to a  Øvrebø before finally ending up at Ålhus church. The author states that it must have been a test of strength at both locations. 

I haven't searched further on these two stones so that is it for today, but the potential location of one at Ålhus church seems a fairly definitive place to start a search, especially if it is the shape or colour associated with the "Sacred White Stones".