I would trust the geologists to determine whether or not it is a rock, but they certainly don’t get a vote on its cultural or linguistic aspects.
There’s certainly no consensus among geologists that the stone is authentic. See for example here:
There was some physical evidence before 1960, but not very much and nothing definitive. In the 1930s a projectile point was unearthed by archaeologists at a Christian burial ground in Sandnes, a Norse settlement in Greenland. It may have been lodged in the body of someone buried there. The style and material of this point is associated with the Indians of Labrador or Newfoundland and not with the Norse or Greenland natives.
[QUOTE=Kensington Runestone (Wikipedia translation)]
Eight Götalanders and 22 Northmen on (this?) acquisition journey from Vinland far to the west. We had a camp by two (shelters?) one day’s journey north from this stone. We were fishing one day. After we came home, found 10 men red from blood and dead. Ave Maria save from evil. There are 10 men by the inland sea to look after our ships fourteen days journey from this peninsula (or island). Year 1362
[/QUOTE]
Since we’re on the Kensington stone, has anyone given a plausible explanation of why the putative Viking in Minnesota would take the time to sit down and carve solid rock in order to record such a temporary status update? I mean, this is not the description of an epic event worthy of being preserved for generations; this is a kind of boring log/diary entry.
Well, I guess it’s a mix of boring diary entry (“We spent a day fishing up north of here a bit”), random transient expedition factioids (“Maybe I’ll just mention that there were exactly 10 guys on shipwatch duty”, “Even thought you don’t know how long we travelled for any other part of the trip,you were really wondering exactly how many days journey back to the ships, right?”), begging-for-more-detail description of disaster (“A third or quarter of us just died. Somehow or another. Anyway, did I tell you about how far the ships are?”), and bragging about an epic journey that’s just detailed enough to be exciting but not as detailed as one would expect in an epic monument (“30 of us made it all this way west from Vinland. No, I’m not going to tell you how or why or how long or even include a name.”).
It’s not like carving a stone full of runes is as easy as typing a YouTube comment; you’d expect at least some thought about what the point is before chiselling away for most of a day, wouldn’t you?
Exactly. Along with all the other questionable things about the stone, the story it tells is highly implausible. There’s no discernible reason a party of Scandinavians would be wandering about in the middle of North America, nor any logic to why a group of seafarers would be trudging around so far from where they left their ship. There wouldn’t have been anything to trade for there that they couldn’t have found just as easily 1000 miles east. Kensington is over 100 miles from Lake Superior, and isn’t on any direct route by water. The Norse were not noted for exploring any distance from coasts or navigable rivers.
I was under the impression, from various books on the Norse Greenlanders, for example Kristin Seaver’s The Frozen Echo, that they often sailed to Labrador (“Markland”) for timber. They had names for Baffin Island (“Helluland”), and, of course “Vinland” which was south of Labrador. Not all the sagas were confined to the realm of myth and fantasy, and considering that the Norse were the best seafarers of the age it hardly seems implausible that they reached North America, or at least Baffin.
Having names for places implies some familiarity with them; in my non-scholarly opinion all the sagas about Lief Eriksson and Thorfinn Karlsefni would have to be relatively recent fabrications which is next to impossible.
Here we go again. As was pointed out to you in this thread the only geologist who claims that the KRS is genuine is Scott F. Wolter, who refuses to publish in peer-reviewed journals, who is known to misqoute other scientists and basically just make stuff up and claim it is true with no supporting evidence.
I repeat my qoutes from Henrik Williams about Wolter from that thread:
"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).”
Is this “Vinland = wine country” myth still valid in the US?
Several decades ago, I was taught in school that “Vinland” has nothing whatsoever to do with wine or grapes, since “vin” means “meadow” in Norse. You can find lots of Norwegian - orginally Norse - names with “vin” as eiter a prefix or a suffix. Either with the “vin” part preserved (e.g. Granvin, Hundvin, Sandvin, Ulvin, Vinje, Vinsnes) or distorted over the time (Ven, Grini [Granvin], Bryn [Bruvin], Økern [Øykrin], Bergen [Bjørgvin]).
ETA: Even Wikipedia has an entry refers to this etymology of “vin” in Vinland
</hijack>
It should be:
Even Wikipedia has an entry which refers to this etymology of “vin” in Vinland
Grapes do not grow in Newfoundland, neither now nor in AD 1000. There is no direct physical evidence that the Norse found grapes in North America, but two butternuts were discovered at L’Anse aux Meadows site. The northern limit of butternuts and of grapes are about the same, and both would have been found in coastal regions of eastern New Brunswick along the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It therefore seems very likely that the Norse visited areas farther south than L’Anse aux Meadows and quite likely that that they encountered grapes there. There is then nothing absurd about Vinland being named for grapes.
The etymology from vín (with a long I, meaning “grassland”) is however problematic. Vinland was never spelled with a long I and the word for grassland was apparently obsolete at the time of the Norse voyages to Vinland. That etymology was invented only to explain why there were no grapes at L’Anse aux Meadows. Since the discovery of the butternuts, that rationale is no longer necessary. It now seems most likely that that the L’Anse aux Meadows site was a kind of gateway to Vinland, with Vinland proper being the more southerly parts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
I had it backwards. Both vín (wine) and Vínland were spelled with a long I. Vin (grassland) was spelled with a short I.
Birgitta Wallace is not a geologist. And the others only say dating is difficult.
So, let us say we can prove conclusively that it was carved in the 1300’s. What does that say about it’s cultural or linguistic aspects? Geology is a hard science. Those are soft sciences, where facts can be shaped to fit opinions.
DrDeth has an unfortunate habit of continuing to bring up the same references over and over again, no matter if it’s been demonstrated that the research is questionable in previous threads.
Sorensen doesn’t just say it’s difficult, she says the technology doesn’t even exist.
It hasn’t been even close to proved that the carving dates to the 1300s, so the cultural and linguistic aspects are what we have to work with. And if you think that facts can’t be shaped to fit opinions in the hard sciences, you don’t really know much about hard science. 
Facts are subject to interpretation in any scientific discipline.
Only, eh?:dubious: Now sure, if it was only Wolter, who indeed is a expert in his field, but more than a bit fringie otherwise, sure. But no geologist has said anything against it.
wiki *Newton Horace Winchell (1839 – 1914) was the extremely prolific Minnesota geologist responsible for the six-volume The Geology of Minnesota: Final Report of the Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota, which is the work of Winchell and his assistants. A bibliography of his publications by Warren Upham in the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America (volume 26, pp. 27–46) contains almost 300 titles…The Minnesota Historical Society, led by Minnesota State Geologist Winchell, investigated the Kensington Runestone in 1909-1910. They were most interested in the physical aspects of the stone and the location of the find.
Winchell made three trips to Kensington, examining the find site, the similar glacier-carried boulders in the area, and interviewing Olaf Ohman (the finder of the stone), his neighbors, and townspeople. Professor Winchell recorded his observations, sketch maps, and interviews in a pocket field notebook. He wrote in his notebook: “I had a long talk with Mr. Ohman, and am impressed with the evident candor and truthfulness of all his statements”.
Winchell’s geological examination of the Kensington Runestone has been adduced to suggest that the runestone is authentic.*
Minnesota Historical Society’s archaeologist.
Professor Newton H. Winchell, a geologist of more than
national fame. He and Dr. Warren Upham, another geologist
of national distinction, had the stone in their keeping
for more than a year and examined It most thoroughly.
Winchell discusses the weathering of the inscription with
much detail In a report submitted to the Minnesota Historical
Society, and he comes to the conclusion that the inscrip-
" tion may be five hundred years old.^…
Professor W. O. Hotchkiss, state geologist of Wisconsin
and later president of the Michigan school of mines, wrote
in 1910:
I have carefully examined the various phases of weathering on the
Kensington stone, and, with all respect for the opinions of philologists,
I am persuaded that the inscription cannot have been made in recent
years. It must have been made at least fifty to a hundred years ago
and perhaps earlier.
*http://www.sunnyway.com/runes/americanstones.html
*Barry Hanson, a chemist and project manager for nonprofit archeology group, Archeology ITM, and Paul Weiblen, professor emeritus in geophysics at the University of Minnesota. Weiblen published a 45-page report on the mineralogy of the stone, and concludes that the carvings are significantly older than 1898, when it was discovered. *
we also have:
Dick Ojakangas, a geologist at the University of Minnesota in Duluth.
As for linquists, etc who say the stone is not a fake we have:
Within the same time-span a few other respected scholars, bucking the tide of
negative opinion, published studies favorable to the authenticity, or possible authenticity,
of the KRS. Among these were the Danish scholar William Thalbitzer (1946/47) and the
Norwegian-American linguist Sivert N. Hagen (1950). Another Norwegian-American
scholar, Ole E. Hagen, was a specialist in Old Scandinavian and other Germanic
languages, as well as in Assyriology (cuneiform writing). O.E. Hagen studied the KRS
for many years, and was preparing a “lengthy monograph for the purpose of proving the
authenticity of the [KRS] inscription,”…Robert A. Hall Jr., an eminent linguist, published a book
(1982) in which he weighed all the evidence (linguistic, geological, historical) and
concluded “with perhaps 98% likelihood, that the inscription of the [KRS] is to be
considered genuine.”
Which you brought up in that other thread, where compelling evidence was given that current scientists - with all the evidence obtained over the past few decades and using techniques not available to the older scientists - dismiss these outdated claims.
Selectively citing only old claims that make your point while ignoring all science since is a hallmark of crackpottery. I find it very interesting that I had to make this point in the concurrent thread about raw milk claims.
You mean, besides the two Smithsonian and decidedly non-fringe geologists that were cited?
*"The geologic studies “are certainly interesting and add to the complete picture, but there isn’t a lot of proof yet,” says William Fitzhugh, curator of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History’s arctic collections. Smithsonian geologist Sorena Sorensen also remains unconvinced. “Resolving ages a few hundred years apart is very difficult,” she says. “I don’t think the technology is there yet to be able to differentiate 19th century from 14th century artefacts based solely on weathering rates.” *
Neither one sez the KRS is a hoax or anything even close to that.
They say that Wolters hasn’t proved that the stone is not a hoax. Given your own admission that Wolters is a fringie, and the abundant other evidence that stone is a hoax, I don’t think Wolters’ research is terribly convincing.
Which hard scientists? Name one Geologist that sez the KRS is a hoax. The only ones saying hoax are linguists, and they all disagree. What "techniques not available to the older scientists" have been used by **Geologists ** to show the KRS is a fake?
And, this is called “moving the goalposts” .
Huvudtvätt “the only geologist who claims that the KRS is genuine is Scott F. Wolter” . I then provide a list of *five eminent Geologists *that say it’s too old to be a fake. Then you say- *oh, those are old scientists. *:rolleyes: