Bluetooth Technology Rune Stone

A little technology/viking history lesson. Jelling is a town in Jutland Denmark 🇩🇰, where around 965AD the 2nd King of Denmark, Harald Bluetooth, created the famous Jelling rune stone. A rune stone is an ancient Scandinavian monument which documents important events.  Harald honored his mother and father (Thyra and Gorm the old), his unification of Norway and Denmark and that he Christianized the Danes. 

This rune stone is considered Denmark’s birth certificate as it indicates when Denmark became Christian. This stone and several other artifacts has made Jelling a UNESCO World Heritage site and is curated by the Danish National Viking King Museum.

The first picture shows the “Jelling Stone” as it was when I first saw it (no paint) the 2nd picture shows a recreation of the painted stone as it looked in Harald's time. You can see a man surrounded by vines. 

A photo of this rune stone (no paint) inspired me to codename our radio project “Bluetooth”. I photocopied the stone, outlined the man with a sharpie marker and drew a notebook in one hand and a cellphone in his other hand. I then put it on a foil and indicated that Harald Bluetooth controlled Denmark and Norway and thinks mobile PCs and cellular phones should seamlessly communicate.  I then made Bluetooth the codename of our Special Interest Group (SIG). The codename worked so well it eventually became the official technology and SIG name that we all know and love.

This is why the Bluetooth radio technology is linked to the Jelling National Museum in Denmark 🇩🇰 (and I suppose the Danish Royal Family); Jelling is the home of the historic King Bluetooth and the location of his Jelling rune stone which inspired the name of our radio system.

The head of the Jelling National Museum (the Viking King Museum) is Morten Teilmann-Jorgensen (standing on the left in the fourth picture). Morten contacted me in 2022 and indicated that the museum wished to establish a relationship between the Bluetooth technology and the historic King Bluetooth, and an article I had written on the naming of Bluetooth lead them to me. It appears the museum was asked a lot of questions about the technology and why it was named Bluetooth. He wanted some of the creators of Bluetooth technology to come to the Jelling Museum and judge a Bluetooth hack-a-thon, and in return they would host a celebration for the 25th and 1060th anniversary of Bluetooth (technology and king).

I indicated that we had just had a 20th reunion (2018) in Sweden, and a 20th anniversary "founders panel" held by the SIG in Santa Clara that involved a smaller "leadership" focused group (origins of the SIG and naming). So I got together the panel members to meet with Morten and worked out the logistics for this event in 2023.

What an event, the "founders" traveled to Jelling in October 2023 and we were welcomed by Jelling and the museum. They gave us a tour/history of the Jelling site, had us judge the first Jelling Bluetooth hack-a-thon, threw us a Viking feast and then threw a huge party (thousands) celebrating all things Bluetooth.

A couple months ago (2025) Morten asked if we were interested in judging the 2nd Bluetooth hack-a-thon, and most of the original crew agreed to attend. I’ll write-up a second post about the Bluetooth Hack-a-thon a bit later.

On the last day (Sunday) Morten showed us that the Museum had created a new rune stone that celebrated the Bluetooth technology. This piece of granite had carved into it a runic ‘H’ (for Harald), followed by a runic ‘B’ (for Bluetooth) and then showed them superimposed on each other to form the Bluetooth logo. If you zoom into the rune stone we are holding you can see the runes. Morten held a quick ceremony to commemorate the new rune stone addition to the Museum with some of the founding members of the SIG (see the fourth photo).

Just to identify everybody left to right:

• Morten Teilmann-Jorgensen - Head of the Danish Viking Kings Museum in Jelling

• Me (Jim Kardach) - Founding Leader of the Bluetooth SIG and namer of the technology

• Jaap Haarsten - Architect of the original Bluetooth radio system

• Anders Edlund - Bluetooth SIG marketing who led the development of the Bluetooth Logo (amongst other things)

This new rune stone will be installed in the museum's stone pathway.  I believe in another 1000 years an archeologist will find this stone, recognize the logo, and then take a 3D scan of it with their Bluetooth enabled holographic scanner.