Pierre runic of Kensington

The runic stone of Kensington is a rectangular stone punt in Grauwacke covered with Runes on its face and its side. Its origin and its significance were disputed since its discovery in 1898 close to Kensington, Minnesota. It suggests that Scandinavian explorers would have reached the medium of the North America at the 14th century, but some scientists and historians describe it as fraud or hoax.

Origin

Olof Öhman, a farmer of américano-Swedish origin, states in 1898 to have found the stone whereas it removed his ground of trees and trunks in order to be able to plow it. It was found on a monticule or a side of hill, was laid down face against ground and was tangled up in the roots of a tree supposed to be old at least ten years. With the dires several witnesses, some of these roots were flattened and married the shape of the stone. The son of Öhman, old of ten years, then noticed inscriptions and the farmer declared that they thought of having found an almanac Indian. The artefact has dimensions of 76 X 41 X 15 cm and weighs approximately 90 kg.

At the time of this discovery, the stay of Leif Erikson with the Vinland (Newfoundland currently) was largely approached and it is resulted from it an renewed interest for the Civilization Viking in all the Scandinavia. Five years later, a Danish archeologist proves that it was possible to sail until in North America on board boats of the time. There were also tensions between the Sweden and the Norway, due to their recent independences: some Norwegians claimed that the stone was a Swedish hoax and charges of the same type came from Sweden, being based on the fact that it was refers on the stone to a joint forwarding of Norwegians and Swede when they belonged to the same kingdom.

The stone is shortly after exposed in a local bank (there is no proof as what Öhman tested monnayer its discovery). A badly made copy of the inscription makes its way until the department of Greek language of the university of the Minnesota, then in Olaus J. Breda, a professor of literature and Scandinavian languages of this same university of 1884 with 1899, which had some interest in the lucky find and whose runic knowledge will be called in question later by some researchers. It makes a translation, declared the stone like counterfeit and sends copies of them to linguists in Scandinavia. The Norwegian archeologist Oluf Rygh also declares that it was about a fraud (while basing itself on a letter of Breda, which forever considering the stone), as well as other linguists. The archaeological evidence of establishments Viking S with the Canada having to appear only 50 years later, the idea of Viking S wandering through the Minnesota at that time seems impossible then with the eyes of the majority of the academics.

The stone is then sent to the Northwestern University of Chicago. Nobody not being able to identify the least valid historical context, the stone is returned to Öhman, which would have deposited it face against ground close to the door of its attic like hones to clean its shoes and to remove the nails (years later, his/her son reported that it of it was nothing and that they had it in fact deposited in an adjacent hangar). In 1907, the stone is bought, apparently for 10 dollars by Hjalmar Holand, a graduate student of the university of the Wisconsin. Holand then revives the interest of the public and other studies are undertaken by the geologist Newton Horace Winchell (Minnesota Historical Society) and the linguist George Flom (Philological Society off the University off Illinois), who publish both their conclusions in 1910.

If one refers to Winchell, the poplar under which the stone was found had been destroyed but several close poplars and of the same size were cut and, by counting their rings, it was given that they were 40 years old. As from the moment when the area in question was not colonized before 1858, it appeared that the stone could not be a counterfeit. Winchell also concludes that the disaggregated aspect of the stone indicated that the inscription was 500 years old well.

During this time, Flom finds a clear divergence between the runes used in the inscription of Kensington and those of use at the 14th century. In the same manner, the linguistic forms do not correspond to the examples remaining of this time.

The majority of the discussions in connection with the authenticity of the runic stone of Kensington are based on an apparent conflict between the linguistic and physical obviousnesses. The fact that the runic stone was discovered by a Swedish farmer in the Minnesota at a time when the history Viking and the Scandinavian culture were very popular, as well as the fact that there were several controversial articles, will make that a tough veil of skepticism will result from it during more than 100 years.

Historical support

In 1354, the king Magnus IV of Sweden granted a letter of protection to Paul Knutson for a voyage to the Greenland. The establishments in the west of the Greenland had been found abandoned - only of the cattle there remained - a few years earlier and it was supposed that the population had rejected the Church (and its seizure on the local farms, acquired gradually like payments of various taxes), was turned over to paganism and part towards what later will be known like the North America.

In 1887, the historian Gustav Storm mentions this voyage, suggesting his return towards 1363 or 1364. It seems that it is about the first work published which refers to a voyage towards North America, concordant with the date registered on the stone. That has had for summer confirmed by a written letter in 1577 by Gerard Mercator with John Dee. This letter gives an extract of older work of Jacobus Cnoyen (now lost) describing a voyage beyond the Greenland whose return with 8 men on board goes back to 1364. Cnoyen also mentions that a priest was voyage and that this one described it in a book called Inventio Fortunate , delivers which is quoted besides in many documents of the Moyen-âge as well as Renaissance, but whose no copy remains.

The Inventio is quoted on certain charts dating from the 16th century as being their source in connection with the description of the Arctique. It is not known if the voyage went until the Hudson Bay but some charts shows this bay at least 100 years before its first known exploration. That influences apparently Christophe Colomb for the planning of its voyage through the Atlantique. Therefore, even if a talented forger could have deduced the date to be put on the stone according to information available at that time, it seems that a forwarding took place well at the time mentioned on the stone.

Geography

Kensington is located close to a terrestrial road of communication between the Hudson Bay and the basins of drainage of the the Mississippi. A natural road of navigation in the North-South direction extends from the Hudson Bay towards the Nelson river, while passing by the Lac Winnipeg, then towards the Red Rivière of North by a canyon formed by the withdrawal of the glacier of the Lac Agassiz. That stops brutally with bottom of what seems to be the bed of an old river (a type of site characterized by a rise in the ground due to the isostatic rebound), in the west of the Lac Cormorant. One supposes thus that explorers entering to North America by north, seeking a road towards the south (potentially helped by Amerindians, those knowing the inland waterways), would have naturally arrived in the zone of Kensington.

Other artefacts?

The inland waterway can also contain signs of the presence Viking. With the lake Cormorant, in the county of Becker to the Minnesota, there are three rocks with triangular holes similar to those used to moor the boats along the Norwegian coast at the 14th century. Holand found other holes triangular in rocks close to the place where the stone was found. A piece of steel Scandinavian of the 14th century being used to light fires is also found between the lake Cormorant and Kensington, place where the runic stone was discovered.

Other artefacts Viking S the 14th century were found with the Minnesota but apparently none of them was discovered under archaeological control, consequently it is impossible to eliminate the possibility that they were brought by Europeans only several centuries later. In a similar way, the dating of some holes of mooring with resemblance Viking remains evasive.

Discusses

Holand brings the stone in Europe and, while the newspapers of the Minnesota discuss of its authenticity, the stone is quickly drawn aside by Swedish linguists.

During the 40 years which suivint, Holand fights to interest the public opinions and erudite in the stone, writing articles and several works. It met a short success in 1949 when the stone is exposed to the Smithsonian Institution, of the scientists such as William Thalbitzer and S.R. Hagen publishing of the articles supporting its authenticité.
However, and about at the same time, the publications of the Scandinavian linguists Sven Jansson, Erik Moltke, Harry Anderson and K. Mr. Nielsen (parallel to a book with success of Erik Wahlgren), again throw the doubt about the source of the runic stone.

With Wahlgren, the historian Theodore Blegen affirms flatly that Öhman manufactured the artefact a such forger, probably with the assistance of other people of the area of Kensington. Another opinion seems to appear in 1976 with the translation of an audio cassette carried out by Walter Gran several years before. Gran says that his/her John father confessed in 1927 qu ' Öhman did itself the inscription. However, the history of John Gran was based on anecdotes of other people whom he had heard in connection with Öhman. Moreover, even if that were presented as a confession on its bed of death, Gran lived several years after by not making any other statement in connection with the stone. Nevertheless, the runic stone of Kensington then is largely perceived like a hoax.

The possibility that the runic stone has a Scandinavian source is reactivated in 1982 when the linguist Robert Hall of the Cornell university publishes a book (and a continuation in 1994) wondering about the methodology of these criticisms. It shows that the problems of odd philological on the runic stone could be the normal result of alternatives of dialectical compared to old standard Swedish of the time. Moreover, he affirms that criticisms had been wrong not to take into account the physical aspect, that he found as being an weighty argument in favor of the authenticity.

In 1983, inspired by Hall, Richard Nielsen (a linguistic engineer and enquiring of Houston to the Texas) studies the runology and the linguistics of the runic stone of Kensington, and draws aside several controversies supporting the thesis of the counterfeit. For example, the rune which had been interpreted as being a " J" (and according to criticisms, invented by the defrauder) could be interpreted as being a rare form of the rune " L" found only in some rare manuscripts of the 14th century.

Nielsen also notices that the dialect found on the runic stone was a dialect " a" very different from the dialect " e" spoken by the majority about Swedish such as Öhman. This dialect was used initially close to the area of Bohuslän in the south-west of the Sweden, close to the border Norwegian and close to a Danish zone. In reference to Nielsen, the language on the stone seems to seem a combination of dialectical forms coming from cross languages.

One century later

In December 1998, just a century after the discovery of the runic stone of Kensington, a detailed physical analysis is carried out for the first time since the report/ratio of Winchell in 1910. That included a photograph with a microscope with light réfractable, a taking away of rock and an examination with an electron microscope with sweeping. In November 2000, the geologist Scott F. Wolter has the preliminary results suggesting that the stone had followed a process of change relative to a stay in the ground of a minimum from 50 to 200 years.

For example, Wolter notes the total loss of Mica on the registered surface of the stone. Tomb stone samples in the Maine 200 years old show a very great degradation in Pyrite but not its complete disappearance as that could be noticed on the stone. Since the tomb stone samples were not prone to the same constraints that the stone, the comparison suggests however that the runic stone was buried well before the first modern European establishment in this zone in 1858.

Some criticisms had noted that the traces of graver had survived very well, wondering how that could have been possible knowing that they had had to endure centuries of freezing-thawing and infiltrations. However, the back of the stone preserved cracks refrigerators which are they old several thousands of years. Other observers say that the runes had undergone the same climatic conditions that the remainder of the stone. In The Viking S and America (1986), the former professor of UCLA Erik Wahlgren writes that the linguistic anomalies of the text and epellation suggest that the stone is a counterfeit but in 2001, Nielsen publishes an article on the Internet site Scandinavian Studies , which draws aside this and other arguments, like that which presents the runes like coming from the more modern form of the runes of the province of Dalécarlie in Sweden. He shows that even if some runes on the runic stone of Kensington are similar to these runes more modern, more half did not have any possible connection with the runes of Dalécarlie and could be thus explained by the style of the 14th century.

The text

The inscription on the face (where several words can miss due to the degradation and the calcification of part of the stone) known as:

“ 8 göter ok 22 norrmen paa opthagelse farth fro winlanth off west Wi hathe läger weth 2 skylar in thags norder fro theno sten wi war ok fiske in thag to äptir wi kom hem fan X man rothe af bloth og ded AVM frälse af illum. ”

Translation:

“8 Goths of Scandinavia and 22 Norwegians in a voyage of exploration coming from the Vinland going towards the west. We established shelters on 2 rock islands at one day in the north of this stone. We fished one day. When we returned we found 10 of our men in blood and died AVM (Ave Maria) delivers to us demons! ”

The text on the side known as:

“ har X mans we hawet At to äptir wore skip 14 thag small channel from theno odh Ar wars Herra 1362 . ”

Translation:

“Sent 10 men towards the sea to go to seek our boat 14 days of way since here An 1362 of our Lord. ”

The English translation is that of Nielsen done in 2001:

“ 8 Geats (South Swedes) and 22 Norwegians one acquisition venture from Vinland far to the west We had traps by 2 shelters one day' S travel to the north from this stone We were fishing one day. After we cam home found 10 men red with blood and dead AVM (Ave Maria) Deliver from evils!

I cuts 10 off men At the inland sea/lake to look after our ship 14 days travel from this wealth/property Year our Lord 1362 ”

Typically, a contemporary Swede can hardly decipher the direction of them. AVM is historically valid as from the moment when any Scandinavian explorer was to be catholic at that time.

Like example of the linguistic discussion relative to this text, the Swedish term opthagelse farth (voyage of exploration), or updagelsfard as it often appears, is not known that it is in former Swedish, former Danish, average Dutch or average German, during 14th and 15th centuries. The contemporary and correct word should be upptäcktsfärd . However, in a conversation with Holand in 1911, the lexicographer of the dictionary of former Swedish (Soderwall) note which the work of Holand had limited mainly to legal documents, written in formal and evolved/moved language and which the root of the word opdage could have been a borrowed old German term. The linguists who criticized the authenticity of the stone regards this word as a neologism and note that the Swedish author Gustav Storm, at the end of the 19th century, often uses this word in a series of articles on exploration Viking, these articles having been published in a Norwegian newspaper which one knows that it circulated in the Minnesota.

Nielsen suggests that the Þ transcribed in different characters above like HT or D could also have a sound in T . Thus for him, the word would result in uptagelsfart (forwarding of acquisition), this being an acceptable expression at the 14th century. The problem with this suggestion is that, in the remainder of the text, the rune Thorn corresponds regularly to modern Scandinavian sounds in D , only occasionally with sounds old HT , and that the rune T is used for the sounds in T .

Another pointed example of the finger by the skeptics is the lack of grammatical Cas in the text. The Vieux norrois has the four grammatical Cas of modern German. They disappeared from the language running at the 16th century, but were always prevalent at the 14th century. Also, the text does not use plural forms for the verbs, which were also prevalent at the 14th century, but which disappeared from the current languages. The examples are (the plural shape in brackets) wi war (warum), hathe (hafðum), fiske (fiskum), kom (komum), fan (funnum) and wi hathe (havum). The partisans of the authenticity of the stone show on the other hand counterexamples in texts of the 14th century.

Also, the inscription contains numbers runic which were never found on other certified runic stones. Usually, the numbers are written like words by using individual runes. For example, to write EINN (one), runes E-I-N-N are used (thus not numbers), and the word IN (one) is in the inscription of Kensington.
To write to all the numbers (as thirteen hundred and sixty two ) would have seriously encroached on the free face of the stone, therefore the author (that it is a defrauder or an explorer of the 14th century) simplified the things by using the numbers runic like the numbers in the Arab numerical system, which appeared in Scandinavia at the 14th century.

Many runes in the inscription deviates of the normal runic alphabet of the 14th century fuþark, but in 2004, it was discovered similar runes in notes written in 1885 by a 18 year old tailor, impassioned music folk, Edward Larsson. A copy was published by the institute for the dialectical one of Umeå, in Sweden and although an article accompanying this publication suggested that the runes were a secret code used by the guild of the tailors, no use of runic alphabet by any guild of the 19th century was not reported.

Without a source to confirm the lines of runes of Larsson (as for example an old book or a modern derivative of a guild), it is difficult to give them a particular credibility. These runes could certainly have been available for a defrauder of the 19th century, but the notes of Larsson eliminate any possibility which would try to say that these same runes was invented by the author of the stone.

Conclusion

The stone of Kensington could be a counterfeit left there by somebody having major knowledge in the medieval runes and the forms of intersection of words (apparently unknown of the majority of the professional linguists at the end of the 19th century) or a message left by Scandinavian explorers of the 14th century in the middle of the North America. Much less probable, that could be a medieval stone created by Scandinavians and moved later on for some reason that it is, or by a defrauder who apparently failed to earn money or to cause a political impact. Any discussion in connection with this stone (as to suggest that the runes of this runic stone were used by guilds of the 19th century, or that the monticule on which it was found could have been an small island 600 years earlier) is an open door for all bad interpretation or speculation.

In 2002, another analysis of Nielsen suggests that the linguistic forms present on the stone were plausible at the 14th century. Moreover, the evidence of existence for all the unusual words and runes were found in other medieval sources. Historically, it appears that there indeed was a voyage of exploration beyond the Greenland in the year mentioned on the stone and the chemical analysis suggested moreover than the stone was buried before the first European colonization of the area.

In a report/ratio common during an exposure of the stone in 2004 to the natural history museum of the national antiquities to Stockholm, Sweden, Nielsen and Henrik Williams, a professor in Scandinavian languages of the university of Uppsala and in favor of the theory of the fraud, noted that there were linguistic anomalies for the two possible origins of the inscription (XIVe and XIXe centuries), and that consequently the runic stone required other analyzes before a solid conclusion is brought.

See too

Pierre runic

English references

Museum off National Antiquities in Sweden: The riddle off the Kensington Runestone
Runestone Museum in Alexandria, [[Minnesota]]
The mystery off the Kensington Stone
Nielsen' S paper At Scandinavian Studies (pdf slips by)
Joint statement by Nielsen and Williams for The Museum off National Antiquities (other one pages runestone also available At this site)
R. Nielsen, S.F. Wolter, The Kensington Runestone: Compelling New Obviousness (2005)
Kensington, [[Minnesota] 'S one page the stone]
American Linguists Keith and Kevin Massey' S research one the Kensington Stone Mysteries off History Solved

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