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Kensington Runestone (Minnesota)

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Kensington Runestone

Last update: April 8, 2004 at 6:17 AM

Kensington Runestone looking more like a fake

Peg Meier, Star Tribune
April 8, 2004RUNE0408

Scholars who believe the Kensington Runestone is a 19th-century prank -- and not concrete evidence that Norsemen beat Columbus to America by 100-plus years -- say they have found the smoking gun to prove it.

The latest in the century-old Minnesota controversy came in documents written in 1885 by an 18-year-old Swedish tailor named Edward Larsson. He sometimes wrote in runes -- an ancient Scandinavian language that differs from the English alphabet. But Larsson's runes were not the usual runes used over the centuries.

The scholars contend that parts of his documents seem to be written in a secret runic alphabet used by tradesmen in Sweden in the late 1800s, rather like codes that tramps have used over time to leave secret messages for each other.

Swedish linguists happened upon Larsson's documents recently and found that his writing corresponds to pieces of the Kensington Runestone inscription. They say that the journeymen's code did not exist in medieval times, when the Kensington Runestone is purported to have been carved.

Kensington Runestone
Minnesota Tourist Bureau

"My opinion is this once again nails down the case against the Kensington Runestone," said Michael Michlovic, professor of anthropology and chairman of the Department of Anthropology and Earth Science at Minnesota State University Moorhead.

"This new evidence is really devastating. It comes unexpectedly and from a collection of old letters that have nothing to do with the Kensington Runestone."

The Runestone's origin has been hotly debated in Minnesota and beyond since 1898. It was then that a Swedish-American farmer named Olof Ohman said he found a large stone tablet wrapped in the roots of a poplar tree. The tree was in his farm field at Kensington, near Alexandria, Minn. A runic inscription on the stone describes a massacre of 10 members of an exploration party of Swedes and Norwegians in central Minnesota in the year 1362.

For more than a century, nonbelievers in the inscription's authenticity have said Ohman or his friends carved it as a joke on scholars.

Meanwhile, advocates insist that the Runestone proves that Nordic explorers were in west-central Minnesota in 1362.

Believers in the stone's authenticity say the new evidence doesn't harm their case. Scott Wolter is a St. Paul geologist who has extensively studied the stone. The inscription has weathered for more than 200 years, his research shows, and therefore the stone could not have been carved by jokesters in the late 1800s. Wolter said the skeptics' reliance on the Larsson documents is "another example of people making snap decisions. They've made up their minds and went looking for evidence for it."

The missing link?

The Kensington Runestone was displayed at a museum in Stockholm, Sweden, last fall and examined there by scholars.

Meanwhile, Tryggve Skold of Finland, a retired professor of Scandinavian languages who had studied Larsson's papers, heard a radio interview about the Runestone. Intrigued, he compared Larsson's runes with those on the Kensington stone.

"The resemblance was striking," said Henrik Williams, a runic specialist in Sweden, in an e-mail making the rounds among Runestone skeptics.

Williams previously had been on the fence about whether the Runestone was really carved by Norsemen. The odd runes had puzzled him. In his assessment, he stated that earlier he repeatedly had ruled out the likelihood of finding a missing link to explain them. "Boy, was I wrong," he wrote, insisting the missing link surfaced in the Larsson papers.

Following the journeyman system of the time, Larsson had walked around Sweden to train with master tailors. He was a musician, and most of his papers were handwritten music scores, but he also left books, letters, farm documents and pictures. The runes are his copies of alphabets -- worksheets more than letters. His family donated the collection to a Swedish linguistics and folklore institute.

Quite a showpiece

To Williams, it is inconceivable that the runes on the rock in Minnesota could have survived in Sweden for 500 years with little variation; languages live and change over time. However, Williams said, it is very likely that some kind of secret runes were known in the late 1800s both to Larsson and to Ohman and other Swedish immigrants to Minnesota.

Williams wrote that he can't say for sure who carved the Kensington stone, but claimed it certainly wasn't created in the 1300s.

To Williams, Alexandria may no longer bill itself as "the birthplace of America," but the Runestone Museum in Alexandria "still possesses a remarkable showpiece. ... Although I personally have to admit a certain feeling of loss at the realization that the mystery of the Kensington Runestone is solved, I am also glad to have learned so much in the process and to have gotten to know so many nice people. I realize that not everyone will be convinced we have reached the solution, but in my mind this matter is resolved."

To Michael Michlovic at MSU Moorhead, the charm of the Runestone remains. He finds it incredible that Ohman, a largely self-taught immigrant, created a hoax that has lived for almost 106 years.

While he has no doubts the rock was carved in the 1800s, not the 1300s, Michlovic guesses that believers won't give up.

"Proof has been established before," he said. In 1977, it was revealed that a friend of Ohman's announced on his deathbed in the 1920s that the inscription was a hoax. "That didn't convince people," Michlovic said. And two years ago a book by the Smithsonian Institution forthrightly stated that the Runestone is "universally considered a hoax by scholars today."

Stay tuned, Michlovic said. There's bound to be more coming.

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1557/4711183.html
 
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Except for one 2004 post trending toward the 'it's a hoax' camp:

http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewt ... p?p=367724

... I found no prior Kensington Runestone discussion on FTMB. So I thought I'd start a separate thread.

This new story addresses at least some of the criticisms cited in that 2004 story and suggests the stone may be authentic.

A Minnesota Mystery: The Kensington Runestone

Ben Tracy
Reporting
(WCCO) It's one of Minnesota's greatest mysteries. It's something that puts settlers in America well before Columbus. A Minnesota geologist thinks the controversial Kensington Runestone is the real thing and there is evidence that he says backs up the theory.

The Kensington Runestone is a rock found near Alexandria a century ago. It's inscription speaking of Norwegians here in 1362. It begs the question. Were Vikings exploring our land more than 100 years before Columbus? Or is it just an elaborate hoax?

New research shows that the stone is genuine and there's hidden code that may prove it. It contains carved words that have haunted these hills and the Ohman family for more than 100 years, yet their faith has never wavered.

"I just never had any doubt. I mean I was very emphatic about it. Absolutely it's real. There's no doubt," said Darwin Ohman. His grandfather found the Runestone.

Darwin's grandfather Olof Ohman has been considered the author of Minnesota's most famous fraud, the Runestone. He says he found it buried under a tree in 1898. Critics say the language on the stone is too modern to be from 1362, that some of the runes are made up. They say this simple farmer carved it himself to fool the learned.

"You're calling him a liar. If this is a hoax he lied to his two sons, he lied to his family, lied to his neighbors and friends and lied to the world," said Scott Wolter a geologist and researcher of the Runestone.

Wolter and Texas engineer Dick Nielsen are sharing for the first time new evidence about the hidden secrets they say are carved in this stone.

"It changes history in a big way," Wolter said

In 2000 he performed one of the very few geological studies on the stone. He says the breakdown of minerals in the inscription shows the carving is at least 200 years old, older than Olof Ohman. Those findings support the first geological study in 1910 that also found the stone to be genuine.

"In my mind the geology settled it once and for all," he said.

Linguistic experts are not convinced. They say runes like those on the stone are made up. But Nielsen has now found the same one here in an old Swedish rune document dating back to the 1300's.

"It makes me ask the question if they were wrong about that what else were they wrong about?" Wolter said.

For the first time Wolter has documented every individual rune on the stone with a microscope. He started finding things that he didn't expect. He was the first to discover dots inside four R shaped runes on the stone. He said they are intentional and they mean something. So Wolter and Nielsen scoured rune catalogs.

"We found the dotted R's. It's an extremely rare rune that only appeared during medieval times. This absolutely fingerprints it to the 14th century. This is linguistic proof. This is medieval, period," Wolter said.

They traced the dotted 'R' to rune covered graves inside ancient churches on the island of Gotland off the coast of Sweden. What they found on the grave slabs were very interesting crosses. They were Templar crosses, the symbol of a religious order of knights formed during the crusades and persecuted by the Catholic Church in the 1300's.

"This was the genesis of their secret societies, secret codes, secret symbols, secret signs all this stuff. If they carved the rune stone why did they come here and why did they carve this thing?" Wolter asked.

He has uncovered new evidence that has taken his research in a very different direction. Wolter now believes that the words on the stone may not be the record of the death of 10 men but instead, a secret code concealing the true purpose of the rune stone.

Two runes in the form of an L and a U are two more reasons why linguists say Olof Ohman carved the stone. They are crossed and linguists say they should not be.

A third rune has a punch at the end of one line. Each rune on the stone has a numerical value. Wolter and Nielsen took the three marked runes and plotted them on a medieval dating system called the Easter Table.

"When we plotted these three things we got a year, 1362. It was like 'oh my god is this an accident? Is this a coincidence?' I don't think so," Wolter said.

They wondered why Templars would come to North America, carve the stone and code the date.

"If it's the Templars that were under religious persecution at the time, that would be a pretty good reason to come over here," Wolter figured.

"I'm sure a lot of people are going to roll their eyes and say oh it's the Davinci Code and if they do they do. This is the evidence. This is who was there. This is what the grave slabs tell us. It is what it is," he said.

Wolter and Nielsen's authored the book "The Kensington Runestone: Compelling New Evidence." Wolter is currently writing another book on the Runestone.

SOURCE: http://wcco.com/topstories/local_story_231002032.html

Digital video edition of the story (with images of the stone) available at the website.
 
As everyone knows, everything tastes better when you add a sprinkle of Templar....

The knights templar didn't have sole rights to the use of the cross pattee. So the link to Swedish grave slabs bearing such a cross, carved 50 years after the order was disbanded is shaky to say the least.
 
Review of "Myths of the Rune Stone" by David M. Krueger

Myths of the Runestone / David M. Kruger
University of Minnesota Press | 2015 | 224 pages | $36.99 paperback / $130.99 cloth

Since the 1830s, scholars have accepted that the Norse were likely the first Europeans to have reached North America, around 1000 CE, and after the discovery of a Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in Canada, this conclusion was all but certain. This fact has appeared in American textbooks since the mid-1800s, and yet this hasn’t been good enough for generations who sought a grander role for America’s Nordic explorers. In his new book Myths of the Rune Stone: Viking Martyrs and the Birthplace of America (University of Minnesota Press, 2015), scholar of religion David M. Krueger explores why so many have become so devoted to the Kensington Rune Stone (KRS), an alleged record of a Norse expedition to Minnesota in 1362, which, if genuine, would change very little about our understanding of the tides of history.

The Kensington Rune Stone (the spelling Runestone apparently was later adopted for complex reasons that Krueger said involve divorcing it from an ethnic context) was discovered in 1898, and it has remained controversial ever since. The runic text reads, in translation, Götalanders and 22 Northmen on an exploring (or acquisition) expedition from Vinland west. We camped by 2 skerries one day’s journey north from this stone. We were afishing one day; after we came home we found 10 men red with blood and dead. A.V.M. (= Ave Maria) Save from evil.

(There) are 10 men by the sea (or lake) to look after our ships 14 days’ journey from this island (or peninsula). Year 1362.

(trans. George T. Flom, adapted)
Krueger’s analysis isn’t dependent on the authenticity of the artifact. Indeed, he does not take a position on whether the stone is a genuine medieval carving or a modern hoax, though his arguments imply that he favors the hoax conclusion. Instead, Krueger’s goal is to examine the ways in which various social groups utilized the KRS in their attempts to navigate American life, and the different and sometimes contradictory results of these attempts. He sees belief in the KRS as a type of “civic religion” in Minnesota, comparable to the fetishizing of the Founding Fathers or the Pilgrims in other parts of the country.

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/review-of-myths-of-the-rune-stone-by-david-m-krueger
 
This has always fascinated me, as has the whole L'Anse aux Meadows / Leif Erikson dimension.

So how does the North American world now corporately view the Columbus and Cabot contributions? Are they relegated entirely from the history taught at school, or is there some kind of dual reality presented during student programming?
 
So how does the North American world now corporately view the Columbus and Cabot contributions? Are they relegated entirely from the history taught at school, or is there some kind of dual reality presented during student programming?

I think more and more people are learning just how much of a psychopathic, greedy bastard Columbus was.

 
This has always fascinated me, as has the whole L'Anse aux Meadows / Leif Erikson dimension.

So how does the North American world now corporately view the Columbus and Cabot contributions? Are they relegated entirely from the history taught at school, or is there some kind of dual reality presented during student programming?

We only learned about Columbus and Cabot in school, not a word about the Norse. That only seemed to come up at university in those days (or on episodes of In Search of...). I hadn't heard a word against Columbus until I was a teen, when I became aware of Anti-Columbus Day protests on the University campus.

My own kids are aware there is a more complex history there, including the Viking settlers, so while I wouldn't call it a "dual reality", there seems to be more acceptance of these complexities in modern education (or at least the education my children are receiving.) Columbus began the Spanish colonization of the New World, but is not necessarily portrayed as heroic, the way he was in my youth.

ETA- as a sort of interesting aside, when we lived on the Gulf Coast, there was a general acceptance of Sieur De Lasalle (who attempted to colonize the area for the French) as a total rat bastard who was killed by his own men, due to being a total rat bastard. Not much romanticizing in that case.
 
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Scott Wolter Promises New Kensington Rune Stone Revelation -- After Freemasons Review His Findings!
3/8/2016

54 Comments

All of you must be feeling a tingle of anticipation that Scott Wolter has promised “new” Kensington Rune Stone research! In comments on his blog yesterday, Wolter announced that he gave a presentation about his latest, and still unnamed, rune stone discoveries and plans to submit them for review to—wait for it—the Freemasons! That’s right: Now that Wolter has joined the Freemasons, he’s turning to the same group he once accused of a vast conspiracy to suppress the truth to help him “validate” his claims. Holy crap. Here’s how Wolter put it yesterday:

In any case, I presented my latest KRS research for the first time Saturday night and it was very well received. I'm almost done writing it up and will submit it for peer review to at two scholarly Masonic bodies. The subject matter of this discovery isn't taught at any conventional scholarly institution so it wouldn't make any sense to them and explains why scholars struggled so mightily with the KRS inscription for the past 118 years. They had no idea what they were dealing with and even when they do find out they still won't know what to do unfortunately.
I can’t wait to hear what claim is so special and secret that scholars won’t be able to understand the true genius of Wolter’s vision. He would only say that it involves “symbolism” and “allegory.” It must be quite special to fit an entire symbolic and allegorical narrative into the inscription’s couple of sentences. ...

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/s...velation-after-freemasons-review-his-findings
 
More on Scott Wolter.

Scott Wolter appeared on the Jimmy Church radio showFade to Blackfor three rambling hours on Monday night to talk about how his fans are happy that he’s been proved right about Vikings in America due to the discovery of a new potentially Viking site in Newfoundland. “So many of these know-it-all academic types,” he said, “get it handed to them” when a site like that is found, challenging their dogmatic belief that the Vikings weren’t in America. Wolter believes that the Vikings likely visited Cape Cod and thinks the evidence will be found soon. Church, for example, concurs that the skeptics and academics don’t want to admit a Viking presence in America. I’m not sure who these skeptics are since, as I have documented, Viking incursions in America have been widely accepted as true since the 1830s. ...

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/s...e-pirate-culture-valued-lead-more-than-silver
 
When my cousin had the dna for his mother's side done he found to his surprise that he had a percentage of native American.
On inquiring he was told that Vikings took some of the women back to Europe.
 
Minnesota Man Claims to Have Found a Medieval Norse Skull One Day's Journey North of the Kensington Rune Stone
1/25/2017

A Minnesota man is requesting $10,000 to prove that a skull found in an old farmhouse is the remains of the one of the Norse men whose deaths were reported on the hoax Kensington Rune Stone. According to the fictitious story told on the stone, ten members of an expedition made up of eight Geats and twenty-two Norse died in 1362 while the others were fishing one day’s journey north of where the Rune Stone was found in 1898. As I learned from David M. Krueger earlier today, Elroy Balgaard, who is apparently the Minnesota graphic designer of the same name, posted a video to YouTube outlining his plans for a documentary to explore his unusual claim. ...

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/m...ys-journey-north-of-the-kensington-rune-stone
 
Conventional scholars seem to scoff at the idea that the Norse were in the Minnesota area before Columbus. Why is this so unbelievable? I am not saying that KSR is genuine, but I do wonder at the attitude of conventional scholars.
 
Why is this so unbelievable?
I believe they do now generally concede that the Vikings 'discovered' the lands (already settled by Native Americans) many years before 1492 and Columbus. As to whether or not Baby Boomer (or older) generations, especially in the USA, have been recalibrated to that perspective....safe to say no, they have not.
 
Conventional scholars seem to scoff at the idea that the Norse were in the Minnesota area before Columbus. Why is this so unbelievable? I am not saying that KSR is genuine, but I do wonder at the attitude of conventional scholars.
It's one thing for the Norse to have had a settlement near the Atlantic coastline; it's quite another for them to have journeyed almost 2000 miles inland. Conventional scholars would need stronger evidence apparently.

(And nobody claims Columbus made it to Minnesota).
 
It's one thing for the Norse to have had a settlement near the Atlantic coastline; it's quite another for them to have journeyed almost 2000 miles inland. Conventional scholars would need stronger evidence apparently.

(And nobody claims Columbus made it to Minnesota).
If you wanted to explore that notion, you'd need to start by seeing what navigable waterways were near the location of the 'runestone' and how they might be traversed to other waterways which might lead to the coast.

In Europe I believe it's been established that Vikings would navigate a river inland, then carry/drag the boat to the next navigable waterway and resume sailing (having first established a viable route with not too much portage, in the first place).
 
Isn't the 'runestone' that was found to have been carved with an instrument that corresponded exactly to a chisel available at the local hardware?
 
Isn't the 'runestone' that was found to have been carved with an instrument that corresponded exactly to a chisel available at the local hardware?
Dunno. That would settle the question for me, unfortunately, as I'd like to see the runestone proved genuine.

As for waterways, cruising up the St Lawrence Seaway and Great Lakes would get you to within spitting distance of Wisconsin - - if you just portage around Niagara Falls and the accompanying rapids. No problem for a bunch of freakin Norseman.
 
Dunno. That would settle the question for me, unfortunately, as I'd like to see the runestone proved genuine.

As for waterways, cruising up the St Lawrence Seaway and Great Lakes would get you to within spitting distance of Wisconsin - - if you just portage around Niagara Falls and the accompanying rapids. No problem for a bunch of freakin Norseman.
Exactly.
 
The problem is you just have the stone and nothing else. Accding to it there should be a burial nearby, but examination hasn't turned up anything.
There should be trash, something to show the Vikings had been through. Even later European travels left rubbish behind as they explored the continent that could be found later.
It's not proof they weren't there, but the lack of anything corroborating the story supports the idea it's a hoax.

And for what it's worth, I remember in the late 90s/Early 2000s in middle school being taught that the vikings may have landed or did land in the America's. The distinction given was that the Europeans and English made the first long term successful colonies.
Native American culture and cities were still pretty well glossed over.
 
More on Scott Wolter.

Scott Wolter appeared on the Jimmy Church radio showFade to Blackfor three rambling hours on Monday night to talk about how his fans are happy that he’s been proved right about Vikings in America due to the discovery of a new potentially Viking site in Newfoundland. “So many of these know-it-all academic types,” he said, “get it handed to them” when a site like that is found, challenging their dogmatic belief that the Vikings weren’t in America. Wolter believes that the Vikings likely visited Cape Cod and thinks the evidence will be found soon. Church, for example, concurs that the skeptics and academics don’t want to admit a Viking presence in America. I’m not sure who these skeptics are since, as I have documented, Viking incursions in America have been widely accepted as true since the 1830s. ...

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/s...e-pirate-culture-valued-lead-more-than-silver

Scott continues his search for Templar Treasure in the U.S.

This week, former America Unearthed host Scott F. Wolter spoke at the Conscious Life Expo in Los Angeles, and to promote his appearance, he gave an interview to the Truth Be Told online radio show.

Like most of the outlets Wolter patronizes, Truth Be Told is soaked in fringe history and conspiracy theories. It also plays host to many regulars on the cable TV pseudo-history circuit. As per usual, Wolter delivered his canned comments on the Kensington Rune Stone and his upset with mainstream scholars for discounting his conclusions about the same. “I understand the scientific process, the scientific method pretty well,” Wolter said. “I really do understand the process.” Wolter claims that his conclusions constitute “winning” the argument and that the losers “just don’t like the results.”


http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/s...ns-trips-to-templar-treasure-sites-in-america
 
Wolter continues with his Templar claims.

... More ridiculous still is Wolter’s claim that the Founding Fathers were “all Knights Templar,” a claim that fails on its merits. They could not be actual Knights Templar, since that order was disbanded in the 1300s. They cannot be “successors” since there is no evidence of the Founders holding knighthoods in the Portuguese, Maltese, or other knighthood orders that absorbed the Templars. And they couldn’t have been Masonic Knights Templar because that Templar fan club emerged only in the 1780s in Ireland, wasn’t formalized in the British Isles until the 1790s, and did not spread into America until later. (An earlier Templar-inspired masonry, under a different name, fizzled out in the mid-1700s but did not spread much beyond the Germanies.) There is, of course, no evidence of the Founding Fathers in Templar Masonic orders.

Wolter’s conspiracy theories reek of the worst Victorian-era anti-Catholic intolerance, and he happily embraces nineteenth century fantasies without understanding their origins or their consequences. But Wolter also alleges that the “dynastic families” in charge of the conspiracy are “very patient” and are willing to wait a couple of thousand years to put their plans into motion. I have to say, if you need to wait from Akhenaten to today to organize a government, you just aren’t that good at it. Just think of all the people they let suffer and die under tyrants because they were too slow and lazy to get anything done. What good is your eternal genius if its fruition is always coming but never arriving? ...

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/s...cas-founding-fathers-were-all-knights-templar
 
Just a brief write up of time. If you consider Upper Michigan copper mines that started approx [2450 BC] . I am sure there have been many cultures living here in North America that we either have forgotten or just lied to in history class to fit the classic [Columbus discovered America] B.S.. "https://grahamhancock.com/wakefieldjs1/ "
 
And now ... a second Runestone.

Scott Wolter did another interview, this time with biophysicist and pyramid conspiracy theorist John DeSalvo on the Science and Paranormal Hour radio show. DeSalvo appeared on an episode of America Unearthed and claims to have lost half his listeners as a result. That’s neither here nor there, nor is the fact that I can’t stand his voice. He sounds like a midcentury children’s show clown, and for me it was like listening to fingernails on chalkboard. His habit of shouting all of his questions made it still worse, his effusive praise of Wolter notwithstanding. (Even Wolter noted that DeSalvo was blowing smoke up his ass.)

Wolter suggests that there is a missing second Kensington Runestone made from the other half of the stone slab from which the original was carved. There is no evidence for one. After letting that hang out there without any follow-up, Wolter asserts that he will “come out again soon” with new claims and new online content, and he adds another attack on skeptics, claiming that they won’t engage with Wolter’s “evidence” but instead prefer to attack Wolter’s personality.

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/s...w-suggests-second-kensington-runestone-exists
 
Parts of this are somewhat plausible, the Vikings were known for exploring and runestones have been found in places that are really weird. Seemingly some of the genuine one were made just because they felt like it. So the idea that Vikings would create a stone monument to mark a temporary campsite is believable. Especially so if the campsite had some special significant like "this is the furthest point our expedition reached" or something.

It's very true that historians tend to dogmatize everything. A lot of them seem allergic to the basic concept of uncertainty. What we do know about history is lesser than what we don't know. This is especially true when dealing with peoples who didn't bother writing down what they did. Or people like the Aztec and Maya who often wrote down mythological tales which may or may not be complete fiction.
 
I’d have found this slightly more believable if it had been found by someone without such a Scandinavian sounding name, for whom runes couldn’t even be on the radar.

Vinland? Yes, credible. A long way inland? Not so likely.
 
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