The KRS, supposedly, was first thought to be an Indian almanack. I can share the suspicion about it being a Scandinavian area, but let’s not get too cynical. The climate and terrain in MN is much like Sweden and Norway. If it seemed like home to 19th century settlers, it might have seemed like home to 14th century explorers.
I guarantee you no Minnesota farmer carved the KRS. The carving would have been hard enough, but knowing what to carve didn’t happen. The linguistic light that has been shed on the KRS makes clear that there are runes and usage on the KRS that were correct for 1362, but only a relative few scholars knew that in 1898, and none of them were in America.
That really does depend on who your authority is. That things I’ve read about the stone lambaste it for using very out-of-date characters, and incorrectly. The runes needed were available in books they had in town.
It also boggles the mind that this one artifact showed up an immense distance from the seashore, from where Vikings were likely to land (and where they wrere later shown to have landed), with no similar artifacts, settlements, or other indications of any sort along the way. The location of the stone is as unlikely as its existence at all. The Westford Rock is infinitely more probable as a genuine artifact, being close at it is to the coast, and its probability of being for real is vanishingly small.
It depends on which authority is correct. It’s mythology that there was a book in MN with all the runes in it from the KRS. The only document with them was the recently (in 1898) discovered Larrson Run Rows, and that was in Sweden. If it is a forgery, and I think it is, it was done in Sweden with the help of runic scholars and sent to the US to be copied on the stone.
This is all getting very cloudy. There’s no science that proves that the Kensington Rune Stone is a hoax. The sum total of the evidence indicates that it’s a late 19th century artifact, and not one created earlier. The problem is that there’s no way to clearly establish it’s origin as yet. Most people taking an unbiased look at the evidence conclude that it is not of Viking origin.
I watched an interesting program that took a look at the origin of the original Archaeopterex fossil. Only one was found, and for many years no other. Without drawing a conclusion, it was demonstrated how the fossilized imprint could easily have been faked. That neither proved nor disproved anything. It’s only the later discovery of additional imprints where known witnesses observed the breaking of the rock that gave the strong proof that the imprints are real.
Science is full of questions that require increasing evidence over time to confirm or deny. In the case of something like a rune stone, it may be impossible ever to resolve. But in this case, the evidence is that it could easily have been created in the 19th century, there was a motivation to do so, the grammar of the message is inconsitent with a Viking origin, and there were sources of the runes that could have been used to create it. All of the evidence in favor of a Viking origin is based on a presumption of a Viking origin to start with, which is questionable methodology.
This is a point I have wondered about and would like to see explored a little more. The story of how the North American natives were decimated by euro-diseases is pretty well documented. If the Vikings were able to establish themselves as far south as Rhode Island, with enough people, and time, to construct that tower, you would think they would have attracted the attention of the locals. Any contact between the two would have resulted in the epidemics coming earlier than the 1500s, right? And, even with the Newfoundland evidence, did the locals get sick from the Vikings’ presence there? Did the Vikings not carry smallpox and measles for some reason, while the Spanish did?
I guess my question is: it is widely accepted that the Vikings were in N America prior to the Spanish, so why did the local Indian populations not start getting smallpox until the Spanish arrived in 1519?
How could it be of viking origin when it is dated (in two places) 1362? The vikings had been gone a long time by the 14th century. Now, there “are” those who think there were vikings in MN during the viking period. And that they sailed their ships deep into rivers because the water level was so much higher back then (it wasn’t really). But those people understand they are talking about hundreds of years BEFORE the KRS. Which century are “you” talking about?
We don’t know. The local population was sufficiently sparse and transient that even a significant percentage drop wouldn’t leave much evidence in the archaeological record. If there were epidemics, they do not appear to have spread to the agricultural civilizations further south, where they would leave more of a record (in the form of suddenly abandoned villages). That in itself argues against an extended or wide-ranging Norse presence.
No, *contrary to the consensus among archeologists before *L’anse aux Meadows. That is part of North America. And no one thinks the Norse touched there and only there.
How far did they get? No one knows and there’s lots of speculation but little evidence. There’s a new dig up north, a coin found hither, and a few rather dubious stones, etc.
TriPolar & Shiloh. What Shiloh is saying that the KRS may be Norse, but not Viking.
And, most of the arguments vs the KRS were before L’anse aux Meadows when pretty much every archeologist dismissed any Pre-Columbian voyages as woo- mostly as they were mostly “woo”. Until L’anse aux Meadows .
The main points arguing vs the KRS is it’s location and there’s no other evidence with it. OTOH, there is no evidence at all of a attempted hoax. My opinion is “doubtful unless some other evidence is found”. The arguments based upon rune styles are specious and contradictatory .
The Norse seem to have been somewhat isolated from many of the plagues hitting western Europe, so it’s possible a small group of them wouldn’t have any to spread.
The Norse sagas do tell of Irish monks living in Iceland (at the time the vikings arrived). There are also the legendary stories about St. Brendan (“the Bold”)-although traveling the North Atlantic in a skin boat (curragh) is kinda difficult.
I did find two of Pohl’s old books-regarding Follins Pond-he did find two boulders with anchor bolt holes bored into them. Of course, he had no way of determining the age of these boreholes-are there any modern dating techniques that can tell when a pice of rock had been sculpted?
There’s the Goddard Coin, which possibly evidences Norse presence at the south end of Maine. There was an entertaining (though kind of breathless and non-factual) documentary about potential pre-Columbian voyages to the New World on H2 the other day.
Parks Canada mentions butternuts being found at the L’Anse aux Meadows site despite them not growing north of New Brunswick, indicating that the vikings spread out that far, at least seasonally.
I think it’s unlikely that the confirmed sites are the absolute limit of Norse exploration, but L’Anse is about the last place where we definitely can say, “yes they were here at this spot specifically”.
This article is rather light on evidence. St. Brendan, of course, is legendary, obvious to anyone who reads it. De Orbe Novo is available online, but what little information there is seems pretty legendary, too.
Vol. 2., p. 259 “Their king is called the Datha,” and the king’s sons act as horses. The country / tribal names he gives are Duhare, Xapida, Hatha, Xamunambe, and Tihe. All of this is reported as second-hand knowledge. It’s quite difficult, no matter what spelling system you assume, to render all these names sensibly as Irish, though “Duhare” alone certainly could be. Edit: this is from the English translation.