Well, I think it’s important to teach the controversy. 
I don’t know that we need to resort to an appeal to authority. Having become an expert in certain fields, I know it means a lot less than some would make it out to be. Let the evidence stand on its own merit; in this case it has little, but that has little to do with the men and women setting it forth.
This is not merely completely wrong, it is actively dangerous.
One individual expert may or may not be right in making an evaluation of something with little or ambiguous evidence. If the entire profession lines up on one side, then it is no longer about the individuals involved. All professions include a huge range of variance of every possible bias. This is not appeal to authority, which uses individual claims for proof. When a profession agrees, the situation is qualitatively different. That’s why most claims of the appeal to authority fallacy fail. They are used incorrectly, as you are doing here.
As for being dangerous, I point to nonsense like climate deniers and vaccine shunners. The notion that all experts are wrong if you can find one who disagrees literally kills people. This is not a slippery slope; the KRS may be harmless but the principle involved is identical.
And indeed this is not an example of a subject in which every professional is on one side and only amateurs on the other.
wiki:
He achieved brief success in 1949, when the stone was put on display at the Smithsonian Institution, and scholars such as William Thalbitzer and S. N. Hagen published papers supporting its authenticity.[35] …
The possibility of a Scandinavian provenance for the Runestone was renewed in 1982 when Robert Hall, an emeritus Professor of Italian Language and Literature at Cornell University published a book (and a follow up in 1994) questioning the methodology of its critics. He asserted that the odd philological problems in the Runestone could be the result of normal dialectal variances in Old Swedish during the purported carving of the Runestone. Further, he contended that critics had failed to consider the physical evidence, which he found leaning heavily in favour of authenticity.
And even Henrik Williams has gone back and forth on the subject:
http://kensingtonrunestone.us/html/rune_stone_3-d_study.html
It is very much so, you just happened to mention the only people with vaguely relevant credentials who are on the other side. As Henrik Williams writes about the consensus among linguists about the language of the inscription:
“Breda and Curme were unanimous in their conclusion that the inscription on the KRS was not medieval. This has, to my knowledge, been corroborated by every single academically trained specialist in Scandinavian, English, or German studies who has ever chosen to write on the subject”
Your second link doesn’t mention Williams at all.
The first link is to a paper written by Scott F. Wolter where he quotes a single line supposedly uttered by Williams, and taken out of context. Wolter has done this several times, and Williams has objected to the practice(this qoute is about another case):
“Here, as also happens elsewhere, Wolter will twist a remark pertaining to something else. As in his earlier
book I am only referred to when I have said anything that may been seen as positive to the “cause”. That I offer
counter-arguments and present evidence to support these 99 % of the time is never mentioned.”
Williams has critized Wolter heavily, and wrote a very harsh review of his book “The Hooked X: Key to the Secret History of North America.”
Williams talks about Wolters methods:
"Scott Wolter is not a scientist and he refuses to adhere to scientific methods. His approach seems to be ‘Saying so makes it so,’ the opposite of what most people demand when asking to be convinced in their everyday lives.
“Scott Wolter’s main claim to fame is that he as a petrographic technician has developed a method to date inscriptions on stone through the degradation of certain minerals in the carved lines. This was first welcomed as an interesting proposal, but subsequent (serious) research has failed to confirm his results. Not a single geologist or petrographer has in a scientific context supported Wolter, although he repeatedly claims that to be the case (without providing any supporting documentation).”
Their agreement doesn’t make them right. They agree because they are (most likely) right. Does that make their opinion compelling when it comes to us being lazy asses and not doing our own research? Of course. For making policy decisions? Sure. But if we’re going to undertake our own investigation, their agreement is not a “compelling fact”. It’s just a very prudent starting point.
Indeed, I did. I mentioned theose as they are experts and they do hold the opinion that the KRS is possibly medieval.
Even if we take Williams article to be the best article on the subject, Williams never says that the evidence shows the KRS is a fake. In fact he says over and over that there is good evidence on both sides of the argument, but that he* leans toward *it being modern, not medieval.
In Williams own article he says “…*it is not as easy to disprove the medieval origin of the KRS as academic scholars have claimed. In fact, only a few lexical items may be judged impossible and they are nicely balanced by the few that are likewise very hard to give a 19th century explanation. The question is no longer is the medieval origin is possible, but whether it is probable or not.” *And
“While I have tried to show that the evidence against a medieval origin of the KRS is not as clear-cut as some believe, the weight of the evidence still supports a 19th century origin. Still, many of the supposedly impossible words and forms have been shown to exist or at least be possible in old Swedish. Even though the case for a 14th century origin still leaves much to be desired, I also want to point out that the case for a 19th century origin is not complete”….
He also flat out refuses to call the KRS a “fake” and says it is worthy of further study. Yes, indeed he does say that it is more likely than not modern. But that’s not that same at all of saying that the evidence is clear it’s a fake.
Like I have been saying over and over, the KRS is “dubious”. It has not been proven a "fake’ and in fact your very cite here only will go so far as to say it’s "not probable" while admitting it is possible it is medieval. I have gladly conceded “not probable” here and on other threads. But “not probable” isn’t even close to being = “obvious fake or hoax”.
Yes, dialectal variances in Old Swedish, that just happen to all coincide with forms quite understandable to modern Scandianavians, unlike any other Old Swedish text.
Not probable.
Written with a set of runes deviating from known medieval runes, but matching a set of runes found in a document written in 1883 (Kensington Runestone - Wikipedia ) by someone whose aunt emigrated to Douglas County. (Swedish documents shown to Henrik Williams and others in Norwegian TV documentary.)
Not probable
Promoted heavily by a supposed source of geological evidence, who as has been pointed out above, misquotes others in his quest to prove the authenticity of the stone, and who, by his own admission, doesn’t care about academic standards.
From the same Norwegian TV documentary.
There’s no supporting archaeological evidence, the linguistics point to a 19th century origin, the runes point to a 19th century origin, and there’s no decent geological or other evidence for a 14th century origin. Henrik Williams is an academic and uses “not probable” because there are no rock hard “this is fake” evidence, but the sensible conclusion to communicate to your average non-academic in non-academic language is clearly: It’s fake.
I would not characterize Prof. Horsford as a “crank”-he was a full professor of chemistry at Harvard, and had a Ph.D. from the University of Goettingen. So even while he was not a trained archaeologist, he was far from being a simpleton.
His conclusions were reasoned, and not in any way crankish or crazy.
Probably already been mentioned, but there is a relatively new series on the History Channel called Unearthing America, where this guy Scott Wolter goes around trying to prove that Vikings and other European explorers were in the US far earlier than history shows…and that there is some sort of cover up going on to prevent the public from knowing this stuff for reasons that have never been clear to me (I’ve only watched few episodes…usually the eye rolling is so severe that I can only take about half an hour). One of his main themes though is that Vikings were much more prevalent and had explored a lot further into the US than is officially recognized, and he’s examined a lot of the supposed artifacts brought up in this thread as proof that this is the case.
Sorry for the UN-GQ type response, but saw the thread and it made me think about the show. I think the GQ answer is ‘there is no real evidence, aside from a few things like a coin and a few other artifacts of dubious origin, to show that the Norse or Vikings ever explored extensively beyond what is historically known’.
To me the strongest argument against the Kensington stone is the absence of names. People LOVE to write their names. An ancient inscription on a building is going to say “Marcus Agrippa built this”, an inscription on a statue is going to say “My name is Ozymandias king of kings”, and an inscription on a tool is going to say “This knife belongs to me, Vanudis”; you can take it to the bank.
What about the fact that the stone was discovered in Minnesota, thousands of miles from other medieval Norse sites but smack in the middle of one of the largest Scandinavian settlements outside of Scandinavia?
Some comments about that showin this thread.
Almost without exception, Ph.D.'s are amateurs, and even cranks, when they get out of their fields.
Ironically, holding someone as an expert in a subject because they have actual expertise in a totally unrelated subject is exactly the appeal to authority fallacy mentioned above.
Yours is the view that is dangerous, as it somehow says that all you have to do to make something more certain is get a bunch of individuals (who you admitmay or may not be correct) to agree. That would mean that all religions are correct. That’s stupid.
The fact that many people believe something, no matter their expertise, does not establish if something is true or false. What does is the fact that said experts will produce arguments, and those arguments can be tested for logical validity and soundness.
I have no knowledge of this work, but what is being alleged here is not that the experts disagree, but that the experts do not provide any cohesive argument that the stones are fake, choosing different reasons. This would, if true, cast some doubt upon their conclusions. At least some of those conclusions would have to be inaccurate, even if only in not recognizing the others’ conclusions. If the experts agree, then it is possible that all of the conclusions are correct. And, of course, in the real world, if most of the experts agree, it becomes possible that they are correct and the stragglers are not.
I again say I am not making a claim about this case. But I am saying this: the reason why experts are valued is that they make expert arguments. It is not merely the fact that they agree–it is that what they agree upon is sound and valid.
Ah, but you see, there’s really no such field as ‘runology”, Now, one expert is Robert Hall, an emeritus Professor of Italian Language and Literature at Cornell University . So why is a professor of linguistics out of his field? Another pro KRS expert is “William C. Thalbitzer (February 5, 1873, Helsingør – September 18, 1958 i Usserød,) was a Danish philologist and professor of eskimo studies at the University of Copenhagen. He studied Danish, English and Latin at the university, but after graduating in 1899 he decided to focus on “exotic” languages. In 1900 he spent a year in Ilulissat in western Greenland studying the Greenlandic language In 1920 the University of Copenhagen established a permanent lecture position for Thalbitzer in “Greenlandic (Eskimo) language and culture” In 1952 he was made a honorary doctor at the University of Copenhage”
What makes one an 'expert" on “runology”? Apaprently- the decision that the KRS is fake. What makes one a crank? The argument that the KRS is real. :rolleyes: Hmmm.
Words do matter, so I have to insist that my words be treated accurately. I wrote:
That quote has two parts: the relevance of their academic training and the period in which they studied the runes.
Hall is a Professor of Italian Languages, and we do not know the event of his expertise in the needed languages and history. Thalbitzer worked long before the modern period of runic discoveries.
The third, whom you wisely don’t mention, is Scott Wolter. And he turns out to be a total crackpot. So now we’re down to two.
My point, which was very clear the first time around and still stands, is that the entire field of experts in Norse languages, Norse history, Norse runes, and Norse writings has unanimously declared that they cannot make the case for the KRS’s authenticity. Are they the only ones who count? Yes. They are the only ones who count. There are, as I stated forthrightly, two scholars who disagree, and those scholars’ credentials are suspect for totally obvious reasons.
So I dismiss them. You can try to build a case from them, but there’s no there there. I did not call those two cranks at any time, you notice, just not experts. You call them experts but you have given no evidence whatsoever that they can be considered experts on the modern-day knowledge of the subject. Why don’t you do that and make a real case?
Well, there’s also However, the use of runes in the medieval period is far from systematic or coherent: in defence of the possibility of the genuineness of the stone, S.N.Hagen wrote: “The Kensington alphabet is a synthesis of older unsimplified runes, later dotted runes, and a number of Latin letters … The runes for a, n, s and t are the old Danish unsimplified forms which should have been out of use for a long time [by the 14th century]…I suggest that [a posited 14th century]creator must at some time or other in his life have been familiar with an inscription (or inscriptions) composed at a time when these unsimplified forms were still in use” and that he “was not a professional runic scribe before he left his homeland”. He published in a peer reviewed journal:Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, Vol. XXV, No.3, Jul;y 1950.
Ok, name the " experts in Norse languages, Norse history, Norse runes, and Norse writings " who have so declared. POST L’Anse aux Meadows.
I mean even Henrik Williams did not say it was “fake” and note he based his study upon others.
Bolding added.
You are quite deliberately skipping over the sections of the article where Williams showed that 1950 studies on the KRS are about as useful as those in cosmology or dinosaurs because the bulk of the material that scholars now use to judge these matters was discovered after 1950.
Williams just demolished the opposition in the politest academic terms. Your total case is of the effect that since we don’t have video of the faker making the KRS your opinion is as good as “every single academically trained specialist in Scandinavian, English, or German studies who has ever chosen to write on the subject.” It is not.
As I understand it, the business of judging authenticity (such as art works) is not primarily based on facts but on feel. This is the subject of Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink.
What seems to be going on here is that experts in the relevant languages know that it is fake. To them, it is obvious that it is a fake (just as you can tell the difference between fake “olde tyme” English and an authentic old text, just by virtue of whether it rings true for you as a well-read native speaker). But that is not enough to convince the wider public, so they try to explain their judgement by reference to facts, which can be “debunked”. Such debunking does not, however, invalidate their conclusion.
Similarly, if you want to refute the judgement of an art historian that a particular painting was not the work of Titian, it is not sufficient to address the particular points of fact adduced to back up the judgement. You have little option other than to spend years gaining sufficient knowledge and experience to be able to credibly judge a fake Titian from a real one by yourself.