The carvings of the stone pertain to the group of unornamented runestones known as RAK (c. 980-1015), contemporary with the early Ringerike style.

The inscription is not signed.

The stone is c. 0,47 m tall, o,48 m wide and 0,12 m thick.

Runic inscription

The rune text begins at the bottom left corner.

Runes

ᚴᚱᛆᚿᛁ ᛬ ᚴᛂᚱᚦᛁ ᛬ (ᚼ)ᛆᛚᚠ ᛬ ᚦᛁᛋᛁ ᛬ ᛁᚠᛏᛁᚱ ᛬ ᚴᛆᛚ ᛬ ᚠᛁ᛬ᛚᛆᚴᛆ ᛬ ᛋᛁ(ᚿ)

Transliteration

krani : kerþi : (h)alf : þisi : iftir : kal : fi:laka : si(n)

Old Norse

Grani gærði hvalf þessi æftiʀ Karl, felaga sinn.

English

Grani made this vault in memory of Karl, his partner.

Notes

The Berezan island is located in the Black Sea by the mouth of the Dnipro River, and thus right on the eastern trade route from Scandinavia, through Kyiv, to Constantinople (Now Istanbul, Türkiye), the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire.

The shape of the stone is reminiscent of the slabs used in stone sarcophaguses on Gotland, and inscriptions of the word ‘hvalf’ (vault, coffin) also almost exclusively appear on Gotland. Thus, a qualified guess would be that Grani and his companion Karl were Gotlanders travelling to Constantinople when Karl died and was probably buried at Berezan.