Name them and list their credentials, please. It’s all very nice to say “all” but if that all is one dude before 1950 and one later guy , then “all” doesn’t amount to much, does it?
Name those experts and list their credentials please.
Sorry, I’ve no idea. My knowledge of the Kensington Rune Stone is pretty much limited to what I’ve read in this and similar threads and on Wikipedia.
I can start with two of the biggest names:
Sven B.F. Jansson (1906-1987). Editor and main writer of “Sveriges runsinskrifter”, the catalogue of Swedish runic inscriptions. Antiquarian at the Swedish National Heritage Board 1946-1955. Professor of runology at Stockholm University 1955-1966. Head of the Swedish National Heritage Board (Riksantikvarie)1966-1972.
Helmer Gustavson (1938-) Also worked as a runologist for the Swedish National Heritage Board. His main job was cataloguing the runestones of Gotland for “Sveriges runsinskrifter”. Also an expert in Dalecalian runes.
These were the guys who were called in to do a scientific examination every time a new runic inscription was found in Sweden.
Marit Åhlen (1951-), phD in Scandinavian Languages in Uppsala 1997,
has been at the National Heritage Board in Stockholm since 1985 and specializes in runes and runic inscriptions.
James E Knirk (1947-)
Professor, Director of the Runic Archives at the Museum of Cultural History. University of Oslo, Norway. Editor of “Futhark: International Journal of Runic Studies”
Your argument is that you trust Williams when he names people who you agree with, but when he invokes the entirely of people who don’t, suddenly he becomes unreliable?
Me, I trust Huvudtvätt. You can see the umlaut right there in his name.
Actually, the use of the letters Å,Ä and Ö is one of the arguments against the KRS. They were introduced in the Swedish language sometime in the 16th century, influenced by the German language.
Which means, I have to admit, that my username is not of pre-columbian origin either. It is taken from a Swedish punk band who released a split EP back in 1981, long after the viking era.
I disagree. You’re name has a clearly medieval Norse origin. I don’t think we can take your one opinion of the matter as conclusive. For instance, you, like the rest of us, can probably not remember your birth. For all you know it happened well over 500 years ago. There’s no reason to rush to a conclusion about your name.
I ĺåüģħěď.
Regarding the Norse runes…when the roman alphabet began to supplant runes (by the 13th century), did scholars of the time write any easy translation guides? It seems to me that the transition between the alphabets took a lot of time, and writers of the time must have provided a lot of commentary on it. So decoding runic script ought to be relatively easy…or am I missing something?
The issue with the KRS isn’t reading the runes, is whether the runes are consistent with a 14th century origin and/or whether they are something a 19th century Swedish immigrant could have created. They evidence available today says the runes are not consistent with a 14th century origin, and that the alphabet used pretty much matches the set written down by a 19th century Swede with a familial link to the area the stone was found in.
It’s common as dirt for small American towns to have a local “mysterious object” to show tourists (akin to buried treasure legends.) I don’t think even the tour guides take them seriously, but there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
No, that’s not true. The “R” rune on the KRS has a dot in the center of the R. This was not known to be correct until recently. There’s no possible way a 19th century Swedish immigrant could have known that.
http://kensingtonrunestone.us/html/rune_stone_3-d_study.html
Henrdrik Williams’ take on the supposed dotted R, in response to the study by Scott Wolter that DrDeth links to.
You’re using Wolker as a source again. Wolter is a geologist who disdains academic procedure and has economic interests in maintaining the KRS as authentic. In the report you reference Wolker credits the “discovery” to himself and Richard Nielsen
Nielsen is the closest this report gets to an actual expert in runes vouching for these marks, and he’s since come to the conclusion that he was seeing what he desired, not what was there. (As stated by Nielsen in the aforementioned documentary.)
As Exapno Mapcase has shown, Wolter’s statement that
is wishful thinking and blatantly dishonest.
In her 1963 historical novel “Avalon”, Anya Seton wrote about the Viking voyages to Vinland. She did extensive research on the Viking sagas, and even traveled to Iceland, and discussed the voyages with a historian at the University of Iceland. According to her research, there was strong evidence connecting the ruins at “Mystery Hill” (Salem, NH) with the Viking voyages, and even earlier voyages by the Irish monks.
So the question really is:
are the Viking sagas reliable historical documents, or are they mostly legendary tales (like the King Arthur tales).
Dr. Helge Ingestad (discoverer of L’anse aux Meadows) found them to be extremely accurate-so why are not the rest of them factual?
The acceptance of L’anse aux Meadows as a Norse settlement isn’t based on the location matching Ingstad’s interpretation of the sagas (even if that interpretation must now be said to have been vindicated), it’s based on the archaeological findings there being good evidence of a Norse origin.
I doubt very much than Seton’s evidence from the sagas would be considered “strong” by academic standards.
I’m not very knowledgeable about this period so somebody please correct me if I’m wrong, but it went something like this:
Knowledge about runes was never completely lost. They lived on alongside the latin script for hundreds of years, in Dalecarlia up to the 19th century. Anyway, they are pretty easy to decipher - several letters resemble the latin alphabet and the source material is plentiful and the inscriptions very formulaic. It’s not like the scolars needed a Rosetta stone to make sense of it. But rune stones were probably not held in very high regard during this period. Many were used as building material in churches built during the 13th century. I have read that there were plenty of books with runes in Uppsala and Skara which were destroyed during the reformation in 1520.
Research about runes really only began with Johannes Bureus (1568-1652), and he wrote the first translation guides that we know about, with the tableau “Runokenslones lerespon”(1599), and the ABC-book “Runa ABC-boken”(1611).
But an expert is still needed to interpret runic inscriptions for several reasons:
The script is often shallow or unclear so it may be hard to make out the letters.
Parts of the inscription is often missing because the stone has been broken and parts have been lost.
Many inscriptions have little to no punctuation so it may be hard to see where one word ends and the next one begins.
The Younger Futhark only has sixteen letters and is not very well suited for the Swedish language. The same letters are used for G and K, B and P, U and V and there are only three vowels.
And of course, you have to be familiar with Old Swedish to understand the words.
I know almost nothing about the Viking sagas, but I do know that when it comes to any culture’s set of passed-down stories, some are inevitably going to be more reliable than others. The Viking sagas aren’t one monolithic entity, where the reliability of one is evidence of the reliability of all the others.
Even if they all started out as pure fact, they’ve gone through a variety of avenues to reach us, and some of those avenues are going to be more reliable than others. If Saga A has reached us through a long line of people who were very serious about maintaining their history, while Saga B went through one guy who was all about the aesthetic of the story arc or who had a crap memory and made up bits to fill in what he forgot, then Saga B is going to have less truth in it than Saga A. It can work the other way around, too - if they all started out as pure fiction, maybe the writer or one of the tellers of Saga A decided to incorporate elements of reality, while no one did the same with Saga B. Same result: widely differing degrees of accuracy.
And the only way to figure out where any given saga falls on the spectrum is by checking it against outside evidence. You can’t make guesses about its degree of truth in a vacuum.
Again, this isn’t anything like an area of expertise for me, so if I’m talking bollix, someone please enlighten me.
I’m not well acquainted with all the sagas. I know that Vinland is mentioned–but I haven’t heard of any that discuss travels or settlements in North America that extend beyond the archaeologically verified settlement in Newfoundland. Where is Mystery Hill mentioned?
Of course, other stray folks may well have made it across the Atlantic a few times before Columbus–one way. Didn’t Oscar Wilde say that America had been discovered several times–but it had always been hushed up?