The purpose of this discussion is a follows. The Runestone found in Minnesota shows another possible sign of people living in North America previous to Columbus. Were they previous Jaredites, or Nephites? Or descendants of the Vikings or the Mississippian Culture? It shows a Nordic language these people spoke who wrote on the rock. The text translates to: “Eight Geats and twenty-two Norwegians on an exploration journey from Vinland to the west. We had camp by two skerries one day’s journey north from this stone. As with any information on artifacts we need to learn and study and then use our knowledge both head and spirit to determine truth on our own. North American is so full of amazing and interesting artifacts.
The Kensington Runestone is a 202-pound (92 kg) slab of greywacke covered in runes on its face and side. A Swedish immigrant, Olof Öhman, reported that he discovered it in 1898 in the largely rural township of Solem, Douglas County, Minnesota, and named it after the nearest settlement, Kensington.
The inscription purports to be a record left behind by Scandinavian explorers in the 14th century (internally dated to the year 1362). There has been a drawn-out debate on the stone’s authenticity, but the scholarly consensus has classified it as a 19th-century hoax since the time it was first examined in 1910, with some critics directly charging the purported discoverer Öhman with fabricating the inscription. Nevertheless there remains a community convinced of the stone’s authenticity…
Winchell estimated that the inscription was roughly 500 years old, by comparing its weathering with the weathering on the backside, which he assumed was glacial and 8000 years old. He also stated that the chisel marks were fresh.[16] More recently geologist Harold Edwards has also noted that “”The inscription is about as sharp as the day it was carved… The letters are smooth showing virtually no weathering.” Winchell also mentions in the same report that Prof. W. O. Hotchkiss, state geologist of Wisconsin, estimated that the runes were “at least 50 to 100 years.” Meanwhile, Flom found a strong apparent divergence between the runes used in the Kensington inscription and those in use during the 14th century. Similarly, the language of the inscription was modern compared to the Nordic languages of the 14th century.
The Kensington Runestone is on display at the Runestone Museum in Alexandria, Minnesota. Wikipedia
The Kensington Rune Stone: Compelling New Evidence
by Alice Beck Kehoe
Richard Nielsen and Scott Wolter are hard scientists. They understand the methodology of science, and Inference, from data, to the Best Explanation — IBE, philosophers of science call it. Both scientists are experienced serving as expert witnesses in court cases. Nielsen, with his doctorate in materials science, realized that the question of the Kensington Runestone’s authenticity likely could be answered with petrographic data. He engaged Wolter to examine the Runestone using current high-tech microscopy. The result was clear: the rune incisions are too weathered to have been carved as recently as the nineteenth century. QED, inference from the petrographic data leads to the carved date of A.D. 1362 as the best explanation for its origin.
Hoax or Truth?
“There has been a lot of talk from some intellectuals about various hoaxes purported to be associated with ancient Hebrew stones or pre-Columbian relics and script found in North America. It makes sense that when Lehi landed in North America he and his culture would have left behind evidence of his Hebrew and Israelite heritage. Since nothing has been found in South and Central America, these intellectuals want to condemn anything that may have been found in North America. Of the many evidences found in North America related to Hebrew, the scholars refute ALL OF THEM as hoaxes!. That seems way to easy to just out of hand condemn any evidence. That’s what people do when they can’t explain things. Much of today’s science is not engaged in finding new truths, but in finding new pet theories. Since no new “Scientific Law” has been discovered and proven in over 100 years, the scientists are now propping up their new “theories” as if they are true. Take for example the theory of evolution. Last time I heard it is still a theory and has never been proven to be a law. What about the theory of magma in the center of the earth? It has been shown in Dean Sessions book that it is more likely that water is at the center of the earth? I’m not a scientist but just an ordinary man who likes to have science and history just “make sense”. What about the intellectuals (some at BYU) that say Noah’s flood was not universal and was probably a myth? What about those who say Adam was not the first man created on this earth? I would rather ask the simple question of, “does it make common sense” rather than listen to many intellectuals who claim to know the unknown or have a good theory for it. For example see what a leading BYU Professor says in Newsweek Magazine in 2018 titled, “Is Evolution Real? Christians Should Embrace Darwin’s Theories, Mormon College Professor Says”
I don’t know the unknown either, but I study and pray about all things and it has to make sense as well. For example, something cannot be created out of nothing. We know this by the scriptures (D&C 93:29) and yet the vast majority of these intellectuals don’t believe in scripture either.
I offer this information below as wonderful information to take to heart. Learn and listen, search and pray and things will make sense to you. By all means I don’t want you to believe me as I like you am only one who loves the Lord and tries daily to learn His truths that He is sharing with us. Stay close to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and follow the Prophet and Apostles in all you do. I have a witness that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and I also know as Moroni promised that I. “may know the truth of all things.” Rian Nelson
Evidence of Authenticity?
Since the coming forth of the Book of Mormon there has never been more profound evidence of its authenticity than today. Arguably among the two greatest linguistic discoveries relating to the authenticity of the Book of Mormon are two ancient stones bearing Hebrew inscriptions that can now finally take their rightful place in the history of the world! Many, if not hundreds of stones inscribed with ancient characters and symbols have been summarily dismissed as fakes and forgeries because it was against the official policy of the scientific community under the Smithsonian Institution, and because linguistic evidence cannot be supported by one or two random artifacts. Recent scientific verifications of several sites and artifacts – numbering eight as of this writing – now establish that people with a knowledge of ancient Hebrew written language and culture were in America during Book of Mormon time frames! Read on for the entire history making story…the case for Book of Mormon written language in America’s Heartland!
Dr. Huston McCullough of Ohio State University has an article all about the authenticity of these many Hebrew artifacts found in North America, and some information on other artifacts including the Runestone. Article Here.
Heartland Research Group of Pennsylvania headed by John Lefgren and Wayne May has been looking in Ohio and Iowa for lost earthworks, Hebrew artifacts, ancient roads, buildings and firepits using the most modern form of magnetometry today from Germany.
Last December Heartland Research Group and other scientists, archaeologists and supporters gathered in Ohio to do magnetometry research attempting to locate ancient evidence of human activity in Ohio over 2,000 years ago. The company SENSYS, from Germany was hired to utilize their state of the art equipment. Heading this research was John Lefgren PhD and longtime scientist. He said the following:
“On Friday evening, December 14th, at the Frisch’s Big Boy Family Restaurant near the AmeriStay Motel in Batavia, Ohio I was eating a buffet and sitting with Richard Moats, Kirk Magleby, Hu McCullough, and Jeffery Wilson. It was a pleasant evening. There were other people at the table. In our table conversation, I turned to the aforementioned people and I said that I wanted each one of them to answer a plain and simple question. Were there ancient Hebrews in Ohio? Richard Moats said absolutely yes. Hu McCullough said yes. Jeffery Wilson said yes. Kirk Magleby said no.
How about that?”
John Lefgren PhD, President Heartland Research Group
Who said yes and who said no to the question, “Hebrews in Prehistoric America?”
“Absolutely”, says Richard Moats Ordained Evangelist in the Church of Jesus Christ International. and Avocational Archaeologist, Archaeoastronomer who has lived in Ohio all his life.
“Yes”, says J. Huston McCulloch Professor of Economics and Finance The Ohio State University and Ohio Avocational Archaeologist for 40 years.
“Yes”, says Jeffery Wilson the director/manager of the Serpent Mound in Ohio. Friends of Serpent Mound, or FOSM for short, is made up of individuals, organizations, and businesses that care about and see the value in preserving the Great Serpent Mound Park. He knows Ohio Archaeology very well.
“No”, said Mesoamerican advocate and Executive Director of Book of Mormon Central Kirk Magleby.
Below is a little more information about our friend Dr. McCulloch and his research on the Runestone.
J. Huston McCulloch Professor Emeritus, Economics The Ohio State University
PRIMARY TEACHING AND RESEARCH FIELDS
Money and Banking, Macroeconomics, Econometrics, Finance
DOCTORAL STUDIES
Ph.D., University of Chicago Department of Economics, June 1973
Dissertation Title: “An Estimate of the Term Premium”
Committee: Lester Telser (Chair), Reuben A. Kessel, Merton H. Miller
Field Examinations: Industrial Organization, Labor
Academic Honors: Earhart Fellowship, NSF Traineeship
PRE-DOCTORAL STUDIES
California Institute of Technology
B.S. in Economics with Honors, June 1967
POSITIONS
Professor Emeritus, The Ohio State University, Jan. 2013 – present.
Professor, The Ohio State University, Economics Department, July 1983 – Dec. 2012, with joint appointment in Faculty of Finance.
Associate Professor, The Ohio State University, Economics Department, September 1979 – June 1983.
Assistant Professor, Economics Department, Boston College, September 1973 – August 1979.
Contractor, Office of Tax Analysis, U.S. Treasury Department, June 1973 – September 1973.
First Lieutenant, U.S. Army Signal Corps, January 1970 – September 1971.
Economist, Center for Naval Analyses, Arlington, VA, June 1969 – December 1969.
Computer Programmer, C-E-I-R, Inc., June – September 1966.
The Kensington Runestone by J. Huston Mcullouch
https://www.asc.ohio-state.edu/mcculloch.2/arch/kens/kens.htm
Maintained and written by J. Huston McCulloch
Send comments to: [email protected]
The same symbol (represented here by “(l)”) appears in the KRS word sk(l)ar, shown above. The runic scholars who originally examined the KRS were unfamiliar with this uncommon symbol. The context called for some kind of landmark. Early on, someone suggested that it represented a Germanic j-sound (English consonantal y) so that the word could be read skjar, “skerries” or “rocky islets,” and this became the generally accepted interpretation of the KRS letter.
In 1951, Erik Moltke, the official Runologist of the Danish National Museum, cited this “invented” letter as the conclusive proof of the KRS’s inauthenticity: “The patient reader interested in the Kensington Stone will have already noticed that it is now in rather a precarious position. But it has not received the coup de grace. Here it comes. In his eagerness to have as complete an alphabet as possible the engraver has invented a j-rune. He ought not to have gone as far as that. The fact is that the letter ‘j’ is a development within the Latin alphabet (like v). Both these letters were invented by the French philosopher Petrus Ramus in the 16th century.” (Antiquity, 1951, p. 91)
In 1987, however, Richard Nielsen, writing in vol. 16 of Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers, pointed out no less than 8 uses of this admittedly rare symbol in the Codex Runicus, counting the two specimens in the above song. It was therefore, unbeknownst to Moltke, an authentic 14th century nordic rune, and not a newly invented J-rune at all.
Nielsen’s discovery is enough to put the KRS back in the running — how could the minimally educated Minnesota farmer who is generally believed to have forged it have known more about 14th century runes than someone with Moltke’s credentials? Moltke’s “coup de grace” thus backfired, and this KRS symbol, far from being “imaginary,” in fact provides a strong indication of authenticity.
Apparently this symbol represents a soft (one might even say silky) L-sound, and not a Germanic J-sound (English Y-sound), as had been assumed by Moltke and most prior writers. According to Einar Haugen (The Scandinavian Languages, Harvard 1976, section 10.3.1), it was also used in medieval inscriptions on the Baltic island of Gotland, to mark an L with “a special dental quality.” Nielsen suggests that this word should be read skylar, or “shelters,” rather than “skerries.”
- Report on petrographic examination of the KRS by Scott Wolter and Sherry Veglahn of American Engineering Testing, Inc., a geotechnical consulting firm with offices in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and South Dakota. They found that
- While the back is naturally glaciated, other surfaces were clearly “dressed” to provide the present shape.
- Some of the man-made surfaces clearly show weathering, but not as much as the glacial surfaces.
- Several of the inscribed grooves contain significant iron-oxide deposits, a byproduct of the decomposition of pyrite within the stone. However, roughly 90% of the runeforms were recently carved or recarved, removing any such deposits that may have originally been present.
- The back side of the stone has two undulating discolorations, “believed to be chemical bleaching of minerals in the stone from prolonged contact with tree roots.” (The KRS was allegedly found entangled in the roots of a tree, although some skeptics have discounted this claim.)
- A freshly fractured surface of a core sample obtained from the KRS shows well-defined, sharp mica crystals in a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) image displayed in the report. Another image shows that the mica crystals on a carved surface have completely weathered way, indicating that the runeforms “spent a long time in the ground.” The report calls for further comparison testing of gravestones, etc., to determine the rate of mica decomposition.
- “Response to Dr. James Knirk’s Essay on the Kensington Runestone” by Richard Nielsen, Scandinavian Studies, vol. 72 no. 1, Spring 2001, online electronic supplement.
- Bergen runes. Many of these inscriptions, discovered in 1955-79 and so not available to early discussion of the stone, are roughly contemporary with the 1362 date on the KRS. The searchable Bergen Database shows that 11 of the 670 items contain the phrase Ave Maria, generally assumed to be the meaning of the KRS Latin letter phrase AVM. Only two of the 670 contain the word virgo, and neither of these is in the phrase Ave Virgo Maria that has also been advocated. For further considerations in favor of Ave Maria, see the forthcoming article in Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers byKeith Massey and Kevin Massey-Gillespie. Please note that an earlier version of this page erroneously attributed the reading Ave Virgo Maria to the Massey brothers — corrected 4/25/01.
- Computus Runicus: The Runic Calendar from Gotland from 1328, with commentary written in 1626 by Ole Worm. More cool runes roughly contemporary with KRS.
- Samnordisk Runtextdatabas. Data base of over 6000 Scandinavian runic inscriptions, sponsored by Uppsala U. It’s all in Swedish, so you’re on your own.
- Session of the Joint Midwest Archaeological and Plains Anthropological Conference on “The Kensington Runestone Reexamined,” St. Paul, MN, 11/10/00. Summary by Michael Zalar, from his website. News article from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, on the NEARA website.
- Dalarna runes from the 18th century, including some of the peculiar KRS runes. In particular, an X-like A-rune (!), not only the well known O-form Dalecarlian O-rune, but an umlauted O-form O-rune for o-umlaut (!), an umlauted two-stroke symbol for y (!), an umlauted A-rune (in an inverted V-form rather than the X-form) for A-umlaut, and a K-form K-rune. Unfortunately, the specimen of 16th century Dalarna runes on the same site does not include these features, except for an incipient X-form for the A-rune, and an incipient O-form for the O-rune. The site unfortunately gives no references to original sources.
- Norwegian and Swedish runes, with additional photos.
- Statement by Olaf Ohman’s great grandson, dated 8/24/2000, on scifi.com message board.
- Runestone Museum, “right off exit 103 on I-94,” with 28 foot tall statue of “Big Ole.”
- AVM Stone a hoax. In May of 2001, a boulder resting about 1/4 mile from the findsite of the Kensington runestone was noticed to bear the Latin letters AVM, presumably for Ave Maria as on the KRS, the year 1363 (1 year after the KRS) in KRS-like pentadic numerals, and three additional symbols, apparently ASU in Danish-type runes unlike the KRS runes. The new find was announced in August of 2001 on the AVM Stone webpage of the Runestone Museum. Three months later, Prof. Kari Ellen Gade, chairwoman of Germanic Studies at Indiana University, and Prof. Jana K. Schulman, associate professor of English at Southeastern Louisiana University, admitted that they had carved the stone as graduate students back in 1985, along with three other members of a University of Minnesota seminar on runic inscriptions taught by Prof. Anatoly Liberman. According to an interview with USA Today, their motive was to cast doubt on the validity of the original KRS. In a letter to the Runestone Museum, Gade and Schulman explained that the third line was intended to read “ALU” (a pagan invocation comparable to Ave Maria), in the Older Futhark, but that the chisel slipped on the “L”. I would have expected something like UMN in KRS-style letters instead. The Echo Press of Alexandria Minn. reported that Janey Westin, the finder of the stone who had spent weeks and hundreds of dollars investigating and transporting the 2200-pound stone to safe storage, was not amused by the prank.
- The Vinland Map.
- Strand of Ancient Yarn Suggests Early European Presence in Canada, New York Times, May 8, 2001. Archaeologist Patricia Sutherland announces that a 10-foot strand of yarn in a collection of Dorset artifacts from Northern Baffin Island “is directly comparable to textiles from the Farm Beneath the Sand [in Greenland],” and that the yarn implies contact with the Norse. The brief article concludes, “Now, as she studies Canadian collections of native artifacts, she says, ‘I am finding new Norse materials every couple of weeks. It suggests there was a significant European presence in Eastern Canada in the centuries around 1000 A.D.'” Sutherland is a curator at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Hull, Quebec. (Link to full article now requires free registration with the New York Times Online, and cookies enabled.)
- Wikipedia article on KRS, with remarkable 1885 rune chart by Edward Larsson from the collection of the Institute for Dialectology, Onomastics and Folklore Research in Umea [Sweden]. The chart contains the exact form of the controversial Kensington A-umlaut rune, i.e. an “X” with a hook and two dots. The Dalarna rune site cited above contains the X-form, but not the hook or the dots. It also contains an O-form O-umlaut rune, with two dots as on KRS. The only difference is that whereas the KRS rune contains a miniature e-rune inside the “O”, the Larsson form has a vertical stroke that extends outside the “O” both above and below. The Larsson chart also contains the unusual (if less controversial) KRS Y-rune, as “u”, complete with its two dots, though without its crossbar. Furthermore, Larsson lists the pentadic numerals from 1 to 9 plus 0, and dates his chart 1885 using these numerals in Arabic placement, just as on the KRS. Richard Nielsen has abundantly documented the use of these pentadic numerals plus knowledge of Arabic placement in Scandinavia in the 14th century, but this is the first example that I am aware of (outside of KRS) of actually using pentadic numerals in Arabic placement. The symbol Larsson identifies as 0 is used twice on the KRS as 10, without Arabic placment.Larsson’s chart demonstrates that most, if not all, of the controversial letters and numbers on the KRS are authentic runic conventions. The only issue is how far back before 1885, if at all, these conventions go. Larsson indicates that the runerow containing the contested KRS letters is more recent than a shorter FUTHORK he also gives, but he doesn’t say how recent it is, or where he got it.The Wikipedia article indicates that knowledge of these runes was widespread among late 19th century guilds, with the tacit implication that the KRS forger must have shared this knowledge, but does not indicate how this knowledge eluded the many runic scholars who have criticized the KRS for using these symbols. Even without the unusual symbols, the article concludes that the inscription is a hoax on linguistic grounds, in particular because “It also contains the word ‘ded,’ which is actually the English word “dead,” and not Scandinavian at all.” As Hjalmar Holland pointed out long ago, this word was in fact used in a 14th century letter by the famous Queen Margarete, who ruled Sweden, Norway and Denmark, and therefore is at least as Scandinavian as she was.
- In a new book coming out in November of 2005, The Kensington Runestone: Compelling New Evidence, Richard Nielsen and Scott F. Wolter present new evidence in favor of the authenticity of the KRS runes, including a discussion of the Larsson letters and Wolter’s petrographic analysis. The Foreword by Alice B. Kehoe, author of Land of Prehistory: A Critical History of American Archaeology (Routledge, 1998), concludes, “The notion that the Kensington Runestone is a late nineteenth-century hoax is not supported by contemporary data.”
