Secrets of the Viking Stone TV Show
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tamrock
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First I've heard of the show, but i have watched shows on the runestone before. I think I'll see if this voice command TV of mine can find it.
tamrock
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it is
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“the runestone”? There are hundreds of runestones in Scandinavia. What am I missing here?🤔
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It's about the (fake) Kensington runestone found in Minnesota, USA.
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What platform is carrying this program? I checked several yesterday and couldn't find it.
Here you go Brad.
Just need to send you a PM with my mailing address for the finders fee that you surely will be remitting for this service. 🤣
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"Just need to send you a PM with my mailing address for the finders fee that you surely will be remitting for this service. 🤣"
Ok then.... You can count on me. Take a DEEP breath, hold it and watch that ol' mailbox...!
Back at ya, for me watching this show.
I advise you to get a supplementary air supply 🤣
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Yeah, I'd like to see that. I'm from Oklahoma and have seen all the supposed runestones there. I have doubts, but try to keep an open mind.
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Slide on over here partner to Tennessee. I just found it here and recorded all of season 1 and season 2's thus far. We'll binge watch with some pool playing and good eats...!!!! Maybe go to the woodshop and build something. We could build a few toy boxes for donation for Christmas 25"...!
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The Kensington stone might be fake. Most think so. That may be, but whoever cut the lettering on that stone was nothing short of an expert stone carver. I’m an artist and have carved stone for 40 yrs. The spacing, shape and depth of the letters are totally consistent. A person that had never carved runes would be on a learning curve as they proceeded. The first carvings and the last carving would look different. That’s not the case on the Kensington stone at all. Also, that stone was prepped with a wide chisel to flatten it before carving. Not something you would expect from a 70 yr old farmer carving rock for the first time. My comments refer only to the quality of the work, not the context of the message or the syntax.
BennyV
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Thanks for chiming in. It looked pretty legit to me but I’m not a stone worker/mason/carver. Didn’t look machine made (like the Dare stones).
One of the people on the show said that it might be some kind of real estate or relationship stone between natives and the Vikings.
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The Kensington runestone was allegedly found by a Swedish-American farmer (Olof Ohman) in 1898; or possibly by, or in the company of his Norwegian-American neighbour (Nils Flaten). The only witnesses seem to have been family members, but there are a number of different versions of exactly when, how and by whom it was found. The story of the find was initially picked up by a regional Scandinavian-language newspaper in Minnesota.
In July 1909, Ohman and Flaten, both gave written affidavits about the discovery, but this was eleven years after the event. Ohman says that the stone was found under the roots of a poplar tree when he was clearing land he had recently acquired “one day in August 1898”, about 500 feet west of Flaten’s house; that he noticed the stone was “inscribed with characters, to me unintelligible”; and invited Flaten to come and take a look. Flaten tells essentially the same story, saying it was “covered with strange characters” that “presented [as] very ancient and weathered…” [but pictures of the inscription show it to be remarkably unweathered, with crisp edges and the stone itself has an overall patina that’s inconsistent with the freshness of the inscription]. The location given by Ohman can’t be correct since it was a swamp and on Flaten’s land. The knoll where the tree was supposedly uprooted was around 1200 feet west of Flaten’s home.
The Minnesota Historical Society reported in 1910 that the stone was found on 8 November 1898, not in August. The report also draws on earlier notes from Professor Newton H. Winchell, the state geologist for Minnesota (1873-1900) who said that it was Flaten who discovered the stone, didn’t initially see any writing on it, then let it “lay neglected for a long time.” That leads to a possibility that the stone was ‘discovered’ twice; firstly without any (noticeable) inscription, and then with the inscription. Ohlson later said it was his 10-year old son who first noticed that it had any markings.
The inscription transliterates to a language understood by most ‘modern’ Scandinavians, is very close to 19th Century Swedish, and essentially translates as:
“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. We were [out] to fish one day. After we came home [we] found ten men red of blood and dead. AVM (Ave Virgo Maria) save [us] from evil” and “[We] have ten men by the sea to look after our ships, fourteen days’ travel from this island. [In the] year 1362.”
It's inconceivable that neither Ohman nor Flaten recognised the text as runic (despite the original assertions that it might be an “Indian Almanac” and that it had “strange writing” which was “unintelligible.” Ohman’s claim to be unfamiliar with runes is clearly false. He owned a copy of an 1881 book by Carl Rosander titled “Den Kunskapsrike Skolmastaren” (The Well-Informed Schoolmaster) which contains a description of a variety of rune types along with a detailed discussion on rune stones, how they were made, and where they were often found. It has Ohman’s signature inside the cover with a date of 2 March 1891 (almost 8 years before the claimed discovery of a stone with writing he said he didn’t recognise).
The inscription doesn’t use a single set of characters. It’s a mixture. You can find all of the characters somewhere else and in use at different times, but they don’t belong together nor are they contemporary with one another.
The characters used mostly resemble one of Edward Larsson's runic futhark alphabets, created in 1885 (building on work by his elder brother in 1883 and earlier work by others), together with unrelated ‘blackletter writing’ and ‘pigpen’ cipher characters. Larsson’s alphabet borrowed from a number of sources and was seemingly designed as cipher for transliterating modern alphabet characters into a kind of secret language, apparently for Masonic use. There’s no known connection between Ohman and Larsson, and the two men lived around 180 miles from one another in Sweden.
In 2019, two short inscriptions dated 1870 and 1877 with runic characters closely resembling the ones on the Kensington stone were discovered in a farm-hand's room in the village of Kölsjön in Sweden, about 10 miles from Ohman's original home in Hassela. Ohman’s cousin and childhood sweetheart Anna Ersson (to whom he proposed in 1879) lived in Kölsjön during 1878 and Ohman had other relatives who owned land there. Further runic inscriptions were later discovered in the same area, but they appear not to be ancient.
Around the time of the claimed discovery of the Kensington runestone, Leif Ericson’s voyage to Vin-Land (the region around Newfoundland, Canada) sometime around 1,000AD was a hot topic in America and there was renewed interest in the Vikings in Scandinavia, stirred by the “National Romanticism” movement. The Norwegians claimed Ericson as one of their own and that rankled with the Swedes, who also legitimately claim Viking heritage. Norway kind of rubbed their noses in it in by sending a replica of the “Gokstad ship” (excavated from a Viking burial mound in Norway) called “The Viking” to the Chicago World Fair which was held in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World.
There is a long history of tensions between the Scandinavian nations and – in particular - nationalistic rivalry between Sweden and Norway. After the possible importance of the stone came to light, some Norwegians claimed the stone was a Swedish hoax and some Swedes claimed it was Norwegian hoax. It is probably more than a coincidence that the stone was found among Scandinavian newcomers in Minnesota, still struggling for acceptance, and quite naturally proud their heritage.
Those tensions were fuelled by Norway finding itself on the losing side during the Napoleonic wars and being annexed by Sweden in 1814. Norway didn’t accept this, declared its independence and the two countries went to war, with Sweden militarily imposing the union on Norway. Thereafter was an uneasy period with both nations having the same King, but also seeing themselves as having their own national identity. Especially the Norwegians, who finally gained independence in 1905 by peaceful means.
The historical context for that rivalry is interesting. Both Swedish and Norwegian immigrants would dearly have loved to be able to identify themselves with the first discoverers of their New World homeland. It’s also significant just how many of the fakes and hoaxes relating to Vikings in America were found around this time either by (or on land being farmed by) Scandinavian immigrants.
I haven’t watched any of these particular programmes from the increasingly inaccurately-named Sky ‘History’ channel. That, together with the participation of Scott Wolter, who has a reputation for repeating his alternative archaeology theories using ‘facts’ that have been thoroughly debunked suggests the series should be good for a laugh.
In July 1909, Ohman and Flaten, both gave written affidavits about the discovery, but this was eleven years after the event. Ohman says that the stone was found under the roots of a poplar tree when he was clearing land he had recently acquired “one day in August 1898”, about 500 feet west of Flaten’s house; that he noticed the stone was “inscribed with characters, to me unintelligible”; and invited Flaten to come and take a look. Flaten tells essentially the same story, saying it was “covered with strange characters” that “presented [as] very ancient and weathered…” [but pictures of the inscription show it to be remarkably unweathered, with crisp edges and the stone itself has an overall patina that’s inconsistent with the freshness of the inscription]. The location given by Ohman can’t be correct since it was a swamp and on Flaten’s land. The knoll where the tree was supposedly uprooted was around 1200 feet west of Flaten’s home.
The Minnesota Historical Society reported in 1910 that the stone was found on 8 November 1898, not in August. The report also draws on earlier notes from Professor Newton H. Winchell, the state geologist for Minnesota (1873-1900) who said that it was Flaten who discovered the stone, didn’t initially see any writing on it, then let it “lay neglected for a long time.” That leads to a possibility that the stone was ‘discovered’ twice; firstly without any (noticeable) inscription, and then with the inscription. Ohlson later said it was his 10-year old son who first noticed that it had any markings.
The inscription transliterates to a language understood by most ‘modern’ Scandinavians, is very close to 19th Century Swedish, and essentially translates as:
“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. We were [out] to fish one day. After we came home [we] found ten men red of blood and dead. AVM (Ave Virgo Maria) save [us] from evil” and “[We] have ten men by the sea to look after our ships, fourteen days’ travel from this island. [In the] year 1362.”
It's inconceivable that neither Ohman nor Flaten recognised the text as runic (despite the original assertions that it might be an “Indian Almanac” and that it had “strange writing” which was “unintelligible.” Ohman’s claim to be unfamiliar with runes is clearly false. He owned a copy of an 1881 book by Carl Rosander titled “Den Kunskapsrike Skolmastaren” (The Well-Informed Schoolmaster) which contains a description of a variety of rune types along with a detailed discussion on rune stones, how they were made, and where they were often found. It has Ohman’s signature inside the cover with a date of 2 March 1891 (almost 8 years before the claimed discovery of a stone with writing he said he didn’t recognise).
The inscription doesn’t use a single set of characters. It’s a mixture. You can find all of the characters somewhere else and in use at different times, but they don’t belong together nor are they contemporary with one another.
The characters used mostly resemble one of Edward Larsson's runic futhark alphabets, created in 1885 (building on work by his elder brother in 1883 and earlier work by others), together with unrelated ‘blackletter writing’ and ‘pigpen’ cipher characters. Larsson’s alphabet borrowed from a number of sources and was seemingly designed as cipher for transliterating modern alphabet characters into a kind of secret language, apparently for Masonic use. There’s no known connection between Ohman and Larsson, and the two men lived around 180 miles from one another in Sweden.
In 2019, two short inscriptions dated 1870 and 1877 with runic characters closely resembling the ones on the Kensington stone were discovered in a farm-hand's room in the village of Kölsjön in Sweden, about 10 miles from Ohman's original home in Hassela. Ohman’s cousin and childhood sweetheart Anna Ersson (to whom he proposed in 1879) lived in Kölsjön during 1878 and Ohman had other relatives who owned land there. Further runic inscriptions were later discovered in the same area, but they appear not to be ancient.
Around the time of the claimed discovery of the Kensington runestone, Leif Ericson’s voyage to Vin-Land (the region around Newfoundland, Canada) sometime around 1,000AD was a hot topic in America and there was renewed interest in the Vikings in Scandinavia, stirred by the “National Romanticism” movement. The Norwegians claimed Ericson as one of their own and that rankled with the Swedes, who also legitimately claim Viking heritage. Norway kind of rubbed their noses in it in by sending a replica of the “Gokstad ship” (excavated from a Viking burial mound in Norway) called “The Viking” to the Chicago World Fair which was held in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World.
There is a long history of tensions between the Scandinavian nations and – in particular - nationalistic rivalry between Sweden and Norway. After the possible importance of the stone came to light, some Norwegians claimed the stone was a Swedish hoax and some Swedes claimed it was Norwegian hoax. It is probably more than a coincidence that the stone was found among Scandinavian newcomers in Minnesota, still struggling for acceptance, and quite naturally proud their heritage.
Those tensions were fuelled by Norway finding itself on the losing side during the Napoleonic wars and being annexed by Sweden in 1814. Norway didn’t accept this, declared its independence and the two countries went to war, with Sweden militarily imposing the union on Norway. Thereafter was an uneasy period with both nations having the same King, but also seeing themselves as having their own national identity. Especially the Norwegians, who finally gained independence in 1905 by peaceful means.
The historical context for that rivalry is interesting. Both Swedish and Norwegian immigrants would dearly have loved to be able to identify themselves with the first discoverers of their New World homeland. It’s also significant just how many of the fakes and hoaxes relating to Vikings in America were found around this time either by (or on land being farmed by) Scandinavian immigrants.
I haven’t watched any of these particular programmes from the increasingly inaccurately-named Sky ‘History’ channel. That, together with the participation of Scott Wolter, who has a reputation for repeating his alternative archaeology theories using ‘facts’ that have been thoroughly debunked suggests the series should be good for a laugh.
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