Newport Tower
Featured in Henry Wadsworth Longfellows epic poem, “The Skeleton in Armor, Rhode Island’s gaunt tower has stood at the center of an often hotly debated controversy for at least 200 years. Although mostly independent investigators point out its similarity to other structures in Medieval Scandinavia, mainstream academics, (eschewing any Norse connections), claim it was simply a flour mill once owned by the notorious traitor, Benedict Arnold. Writing in the July/August, 1996, issue of Ancient American, Paul Chapman poked holes in official explanations for the old building and showed how the father of modern cartography helped confirm its pre-Colonial origins. In addition to Chapman’s insightful articles for Ancient American during the 1990s, his Norse History of America was used as a textbook at Harvard and cited for its excellence by the editors of U.S. News & World Report.
Rhode Island's enigmatic structure bears an uncanny resemblance to Medieval counterparts in Scandinavia.The Newport Tower: Colonial Mill or Viking Lighthouse? by Paul H. Chapman
An official report that persuaded the academic community that the Newport, Rhode Island, Tower is of colonial origin is deeply flawed. In fact, it contains enough internal information to negate its own argument. In an attempt to identify the stone Tower as either the workmanship of Scandinavian visitors to America a thousand years ago or establish it as merely a Colonial Period structure, archaeologist William S. Godfrey, Jr., was commissioned to excavate it, which he did in 1948 and 1949. His findings were subsequently published
in American Antiquity (2, 1951): “The Tower could not have been built before the latter half of the 17th century. The Norse theory can no longer be entertained.”
But in researching my book, The Norse Discovery of America, I found that Gerald Mercator’s map of 1569 actually indicated the Newport Tower at Narragansett Bay. Because Mercator published his map some 67 years prior to the colonial settlement, it stands to reason that the Tower could not have been of colonial origin. Unlike Yale’s famous Vinland Map, Mercator’s has both an identified cartographer for its source and a long history on record. It remains at the Prince Hendrick Maritime Museum, in the Netherlands. Mercator was a well-known mapmaker and leader in his field. The popular “Mercator Projection” method of constructing a map is named for him. His mention of the Tower in his pre-Colonial map seemed to be irrefutable evidence that the structure was in existence prior to the arrival of 17th-century Europeans.
Despite the Mercator find, however, Establishment experts continue to cling to obsolete theories. In 1982, the Chicago Historical Society’s Archaeological Institute of America co-sponsored a symposium entitled “Vikings in the West.” One of the papers presented was “Viking Hoaxes,” by Brigitta Wallace. My new observations received no attention, and Godfrey’s 32-year-old interpretations were dusted off. His flawed report was reverently held up as some kind of academic classic of debunking, and even elaborated upon and enlarged with no regard to its myriad of inaccuracies. In supporting Godfrey, Wallace stated that “the excavations also proved, once and for all, that an ambulatory surrounding the tower had never existed.”
But Godfrey’s report refers to a “possible posthole having been found in the trench which extended out from a tower opening.” This may or may not have been a fence post hole, as was postulated, but one cannot rule out its having been a post for an adjoining structure. The Mercator map shows just such an adjoining structure. In any
event, post holes are not required for buildings; we’ve had houses in America without such well into the 20th century. Dr. Godfrey dutifully dug a trench through the ground under this structure, and reported the details of his work, even including the hard evidence that contradicts his own analysis. But he was blinded to the truth he himself unearthed. Godfrey’s colleagues, who welcomed his report, were, not surprisingly, likewise closed-minded or woefully ignorant of its contents. Even today’s archaeological and historical communities in general still blindly accept this overrated individual’s opinion, as flawed as it is, simply because he was the “expert” who proclaimed it. As Christopher Fry remarks in his play, The Lady’s not for Burning, “What is official is incontestable.”
What exactly is wrong with Godfrey’s report? Surprisingly, he begins by conceding, “The weight of evidence favors the Norse theory.” But then catches himself, and hastens to add, “The weight of authority favors the Colonial theory.” In other words, Godfrey confesses that he ignores evidence that happens to contradict the academic powers-that-be. His admission is a revealing comment on the pathetic condition of modern archaeology. The only authority cited for the Tower’s Colonial origins, however, was then Governor Benedict Arnold’s will, which “mentioned the Tower.” Godfrey goes on to quote from this will: “My stone-built wind-mill.” Such a statement of ownership, contained in a person’s will, does not constitute proof that Arnold constructed the Tower. If he had, we could assume that personal pride would have him say, “The stone wind mill I built.” Arnold’s will is a paltry piece of evidence on behalf of any Colonial provenance and utterly insufficient to prove the Tower’s actual identity, one way or the other. More valuably, it reveals a preconceived bias.
A proponent of the Norse origin presented a map of the Narraganset Bay area, drawn in 1634, showing a settlement marked “Old Plymouth” on the eastern shore of the bay. Godfrey belabored him, saying that the author’s “claim, ‘it is exactly in the position now occupied by Newport,’ is unsubstantiated... no support other
than his basic interpretation, which is probably in error.” Godfrey was nit-picking. As regards an “exact” location, “Old Plymouth” does show on the eastern shore of the bay. Newport is on its eastern shore. The position, though it may not be exactly correct, is certainly right within the degree of accuracy of the map.
Next, Godfrey condemned as a “documentary misconception” any belief that the Plowden Petition of 1632 referred to the Newport Tower. This petition requested a grant of Long Island and part of the mainland, and mentioned “a round stone tower.” He argues, “Holland’s contention that this refers to the tower in Newport is difficult to believe. By no interpretation of the petition would Rhode Island be considered mainland adjacent to Long Island.”
In fact, however, present-day Rhode Island is diagonally across Block Island Sound from Long Island. Seventeeth century maps were not always configured north-south, and often coastal maps were lined up with the coast. Accordingly, even present-day Rhode Island would be portrayed as “adjacent.”
Godfrey insisted that Narragansett Bay is not the “Vinland” of the Sagas. Here, at least, I am inclined to agree with him. The navigational research presented in my book shows Vinland located elsewhere. But this is a moot point. The Vinland Sagas cover a brief period of approximately 15 years, and the Norse were known to be sailing out of Greenland for a period close to five hundred years. Other settlements must be considered as possibilities.
Godfrey writes with regard to details of the Newport Tower’s second-floor fireplace, “Many architects and antiquarians have debated these items fruitlessly, and on physical characteristics the Tower remains enigmatic.” I have shown the position of the fireplace (including its second-floor location), and the shape and size of the window on the opposite wall, casting a beacon light from the fire down the channel. Thus the Tower served as a lighthouse. However, I was not published until after Godfrey had written his paper.
Now we come to the faulty reasoning that led the archaeologist to misconstrue his own work. He describes his discovery in the trenching operation as a blue clay on bedrock, with yellow clay next. Above this was loam containing Colonial artifacts, and then “what were probably the remains of an original gravel floor... we thus confirmed a layer of brown earth under the earliest floor.” By the authors own account, the gravel was discovered during the course of the digging of the trench. Neither was it widespread across the floor. It had been found in only three places. Yet, he speculates that this was “probably the remains of an original gravel floor.”
First, he assumes the gravel was throughout this upper level. Next, he assumes that it was flooring material; and finally, he assumes it was the original floor. Evidence exists for none of his assumptions. Godfrey overlooked or was in ignorance of the use of clay as a flooring material. The Norse, in their sod houses, utilized clay for floors. On a research visit to the Faeroes, I found one such house still standing. It was surprising how neat and clean the floor appeared, similar to linoleum. As for the top soil to which he refers (the brown dirt), it would seem far more likely that it was an accumulation since the structure’s original construction. Likewise, the archaeologist’s assumption that the three scattered spots of gravel represented the original floor simply cannot be accepted. A floor should go wall to wall, and there is no indication that it did so.
Second, there is no reason to believe gravel would have been used as flooring in the first place, when a perfectly good clay was already located there. Another explanation for the spots of gravel seems more logical. Construction work was done within the tower during historical times upon at least two occasions, as noted by Godfrey. In addition there were two more obvious construction projects on the outside: a cement walkway and an iron fence imbedded in concrete. Each of these would have required gravel, and in the days before cement mixer trucks, gravel was brought along with the sand and cement to a construction site then stored where possible in a sheltered area. The Tower could have served such a purpose.
They then concluded that because the Colonial artifacts found in the top soil were below the floor level, the structure was Colonial. Unfortunately for these conventional investigators, the entire thrust of their report was based on this gravel assumption. In the center of the Newport Tower, treasure hunters once dug a pit, reportedly 4 to 5 feet deep. Theirs was not the only instance of an on-site disturbance. The archaeologists themselves named another area the “barbecue pit” because of the large quantities of bones and charred wood found within it, the refilling of which they described as “haphazard.” During the period 1930 to 1948, maintenance crews “dug out the center of the Tower, and at the end of the 1948 season, added topsoil.”
But the most significant of the prior investigations is revealed not in the archaeologist’s diggings, but in another written report that he cites. This refers to “Catherwood’s measured plans of 1837, which show 16 inches of the north column drum exposed.” The importance of Godfrey’s “floor level” line of reasoning becomes apparent. He was only looking for selective evidence to substantiate his Colonial Origins Theory, which alone interested him. Having already dismissed any consideration of a possible pre-Colonial provenance for the Newport Tower, his agenda focused exclusively on finding proof for his politically correct assumptions. Godfrey writes, “to observe this area I pried several loose stones at the column base, but it was impossible to tell whether they were the top-most foundation stones of the plastered drum. In the brown earth, protected in its position by one of the stones which we removed, was a small gun flint and a fragment of plaster. These objects were in the brown earth under the edge of the column.”
The author previously argued, and with good reason, that “it must have been necessary to fill in the construction trench (around the foundation stones) before the above ground building was begun, for the foundation stones were not mortared or fitted in any way. Apparently this refilling was done before the foundations were capped with mortar.” Continuing, he writes “excavations on the inside of the vertical
columns disclosed that the yellow-olive clay which refilled the construction trench, as well as a very thin layer of loam, actually covered part of the foundation stones before the mortar cap was poured... on these prepared mortar surfaces, the columns were then built, the stones perhaps roughly shaped after setting and the drum then plastered.”
As can be seen from the previous, the plastering of the walls and drum took place after the foundation stones had been backfilled and mortar capped. For a piece of the plaster to have made its way underneath could have happened only during some sort of excavation. Any such opening would have also enable the “small gun flint” to enter the same area.
The case for a Colonial construction date of the Newport Tower has not been proven. Establishment archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists who have accepted Godfreys conclusions at face value need to have a further look at his evidence. In whatever year its foundation was laid, the Newport Tower's pre-Colonial origins are certain. And though nothing else like it was erected in New England, its close resemblance to structures built along the coasts of 11th-century Sweden underscore its identity as a Viking Age lighthouse for Scandinavian voyagers from across the North Atlantic.
Maine Coon Cat
An Ancient American article that attracted attention from as far away as New Zealand and Holland, and drew reader response for years after its first publication in the September/October, 2002 issue described a New England feline with a pre-Columbian pedigree. Sally, the Maine Coon in question who posed for the original article, has since moved on to Valhalla, but her memory and the impact of her kind on the prehistory of our continent lives on.
The Viking Cat That Discovered America by Frank Joseph
DNA research is not only revolutionizing police work, but uncovering otherwise unknown historical information with no less revolutionizing consequences for our understanding of the past. A case in point is the unexpected solution of an old controversy surrounding the Maine Coon Cat. The breed has long perplexed biologists, because they were unable to explain its unique appearance or trace its origins. The animal derived its modern identity from the state in which it is primarily found, although smaller populations appear in the Atlantic coastal regions of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
Somewhat larger than the average housecat, specimens of 10 or more pounds are common. But the beast is best known for its unusual hind-quarters, which resemble those of a raccoon; hence, its name. Moreover, its bushy tail, brown and white striped markings, together with an occasional tendency to wash its food, helped to promote its reputation as the result of unions between cats and raccoons. But such crossings are biologically impossible, because raccoons are not felines, but canines related to members of the dog family.
In an attempt to trace the genetic origins of the singular Maine Coon Cat, scientists subjected it to DNA testing last year for the first time. The results were as clear as they were surprising: The Maine Coon is the direct descendant of an unknown, domestic breed that went extinct within the last few centuries and the skaugkatt, or “Norwegian Forest Cat,” brought to our continent from Scandinavia
1.000 years ago. As the Website for the Cat Fanciers’ Association explains, “These are the cats that explored the world with the Vikings, protecting the grain stores on land and sea, and are believed to have left their progeny on the shores of North America, as a legacy to the future. Is their Norse name accurate? Yes, the skaugkatt, meaning ‘forest cat,’ really did come out of the Scandinavian forests in the last 4.000 years.”
The Norwegian Skaugkatt from which Sally descended is known in Scandinavia as the "Mountain Fairy Cat" for its singular ability to scale vertical cliff faces.
Because the large animals are determined hunters, they were invariably taken aboard Viking expeditions to keep the long-ships free of vermin. When the Medieval Scandinavians landed along North American coasts, some of the “wegies,” as they are commonly nicknamed in Britain and the United States, jumped overboard, and mated with that unknown domestic breed that no longer exists. The living descendants of those early days in Viking America are todays Maine Coon Cats. Their majority presence in the state that gave them its name suggests that the Norse did more than briefly establish a settlement at L’Ans aux Meadows, as mainstream scholars insist, but went on to colonize other parts of the Eastern Seaboard. Concentration of the Maine Coon's population in that state implies that the Vikings’ elusive Vinland was in Maine after all.
The Maine Coon’s descent from Norway’s Forest Cat is unmistakable. The skaugkatt is somewhat larger; its fur texture is not quite as silky; the head shape is slightly different; tufts, not seen on its American
counterpart, sprout from the tips of its ears, and, most noticeably, its hind legs are straighter. But physical and behavioral comparisons leave no doubt that it is the ancestor of the Maine Coon Cat, as confirmed by DNA research. In a happy coincidence, the skaugkatt was designated Norway’s official cat by King Olaf late in the last century, about the same time the Maine Coon was named the official cat of the Pine Tree State. Connections between the two are valid evidence for Medieval Norse in America, centuries before Columbus. Anyone who wants to meet a direct descendant of the first Viking visitors to our continent need only make the acquaintance of a Maine Coon Cat.
Runestone Hoaxes
Of the several alleged Midwestern runestones, all allegedly carved by Vikings before the 16th century, specimens in Minnesota and Oklahoma are the most famous. But for conventional thinkers, the year 1492 represents a permanent barrier over which no one from the Old Worlds of East or West could have crossed to America. Hence, any contrary “evidence” must be, ipso facto, false—part of a conspiracy to fool respectable scholars. Such a closed-minded attitude is the precise opposite of scientific thought, which is based on a suspension of judgment until all relevant facts have been presented. Even so, it is precisely this kind of academic myopia that dominates Establishment archaeology, at least in the United States.
In the opening sentence of his article for Ancient Americans November/December, 2002 issue, Dr. Haines concedes that “it is now generally accepted” that the Norse arrived in the New World long before Columbus. He fails to mention, however, that the Establishment critics who
currently dismiss the Minnesota and Oklahoma runestones as fraudulent are the same naysayers who for years denigrated the merest suggestion of a Viking presence in Labrador, until they were overwhelmed by the evidence. Moreover, his theory that the Oklahoma runestone was actually made by late-16th-century German farmers is patently wrong because: (1) the Heavener inscription was chiseled in Old Norse and (2) it would have made no sense for the immigrants, who spoke only German and a smattering of English, to have carved a monumental territorial marker in a dead language they could not understand!
Contrary opinions, such as those espoused by Dr. Haines, are nonetheless welcome by Ancient American readers, who believe the truth may be ascertained only if all points of view are freely considered.
The Kensington and Heavener Runestone Hoaxes By Dr. J.D. Haines, M.D.
It is now generally accepted that the Vikings were the first Europeans to set foot in the New World. But were they also the first white men to discover Minnesota and Oklahoma?
Though Leif Ericsson is believed to have sailed from Greenland to Baffin Island, Nova Scotia, Labrador, and perhaps Newfoundland, further explorations into the North American interior seem unlikely. When Ericsson returned to Greenland in 1012 A.D., he called his discovery “Vinland,” because he had observed grapes and wild wheat growing there. His journey was described in the book Greenlander’s Saga. Recent archeological research has confirmed authentic Norse artifacts in the Arctic, Labrador, Newfoundland, and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, substantiating the old histories. Beginning in 1837, evidence of Norse explorations far into continental America was first proposed. The two sites were in the New England area at Cape Cod and Newport, Rhode Island, and deep into the Midwest, at Kensington, Minnesota, an incredible 4,000 miles (as the crow flies) from Greenland.
Interest in Norse visitors to present day America peaked in 1837 due to the publication of Antiquates American, by an Icelandic-Danish antiquarian, Carl Christian Rafh. The romantic image of bold Nordic warriors conquering the New World stirred the public’s imagination. Over the next 150 years, a total of 52 sites, 69 artifacts, and up to 100 inscriptions were cited as evidence of Viking explorations throughout North America.
Two of the most famous sites in the American Midwest are the Kensington Stone, in Minnesota, and the Heavener Runestone, in Oklahoma. Initial enthusiasm over the discoveries has greatly diminished among all but the most blindly devoted of believers. Unfortunately, both of these hoaxes have been formally memorialized by state museums, so the joke is now on the taxpayers. The stories of the Kensington and Heavener Runestones are instructive as examples of the influence of pseudo-science today.
In 1898, the Kensington Stone was discovered on the Minnesota farm of Olof Ohman. He was a Swede who had immigrated to America in 1879, and bought his farm from a Norwegian. Ohman claimed that he found the curious tablet-like stone bearing ancient runes buried on a small wooded knoll. The stone was supposedly tangled in the roots of a tree. The runic text featured on the stone describes a party of 30 Scandinavians traveling westwards from “Vinland” (presumably Maine or Labrador) to what is now north-central Minnesota. The inscription reports that 10 people in their group were massacred. All this was supposed to have taken place in 1362 A.D.
The discovery of an authentic runestone in Minnesota was highly unusual, because the custom of erecting runestones had not been transferred from Scandinavia to Iceland and Greenland. The stone itself was also unique, in that the runes were cut with a chisel and
punch, with all cuts clear and sharp. In Scandinavia, runes were always pecked with a pointed hammer. In addition, the runes were arranged in the fashion of a book page, rather than the typical Scandinavian practice of carving runes around the periphery of the stone. When Ohman made known his discovery, the runestone was shipped to Northwestern University, where Dr. G.O. Curme examined it. The professor claimed that the message was written in modern Swedish and incorporated recent runes. He also commented on the freshness of the cuts, which lacked patina, like the rest of the stone. Curme dismissed the stone as a joke and returned it to Mr. Ohman. It was later revealed that Mr. Ohman had been trained as a mason and that some of the runes showed peculiarities similar to the dialect of Sweden where Ohman was from. Ohman also owned two books of runes and knew how to read and write runes, as did many 19th-century Swedes.
The stone would have been most likely forgotten, if not for an ambitious book salesman and amateur historian, Hjalmar Holand. Nine years after Ohman’s find, Holand set out on a lifelong crusade to convince the world that the stone was authentic. Up until his death in 1963, Holand never wavered, continually seeking corroborating evidence including artifacts, documents, and other runestones in the area.
Ohman did not admit to having carved the stone himself, but there may have been a legal reason. After acquiring the stone, Holand attempted to sell it to the Minnesota Historical Society in 1910. Holand’s asking price was an exorbitant $5,000. Ohman objected to the sale, prompting the historical society to launch an official investigation, which included the authenticity of the stone. If Ohman had carved the stone himself, he undoubtedly would have feared that the hoax would be exposed, making him guilty of fraud against the state. In these circumstances, it is understandable that Ohman would not have admitted to carving the stone. The following year Ohman accepted $100 from the historical society for the stone but refused
to discuss the matter further for the rest of his life. Following Holand’s death, two American researchers, Alf Monge and O.G. Landsverk, added a new twist to the runic translations. They claimed that the runes contained hidden messages in the form of cryptograms.
The Kensington Stone fostered new discoveries of artifacts on the east coast and Midwest. So-called Norse battle-axes were later found to be early American lumbering tools. Particularly amusing were the discovery of 30 small “halberds” throughout the U.S. When it was observed by critics that the halberds were too flimsy to be used in battle, proponents quickly dubbed them as ceremonial halberds. Holand vigorously defended the halberds as authentic. When no similar examples could be found in Scandinavia, he pronounced them so rare that even Scandinavian museums did not have examples. Research showed that the halberds were actually 19th-century tobacco cutters distributed as part of an advertising campaign for the Battle Axe Tobacco Company. The cutters were manufactured by the Rogers Iron Company in Springfield, Ohio. After having outlived their usefulness as plug tobacco cutters, they were removed from the hinged attachment to a cutting board and used as hatchets. Some were reportedly popular for decapitating chickens. The Kensington Stone is very similar to another rune stone hoax, this time in Oklahoma. A stone with strange carvings was supposedly known to Choctaw Indians after their removal to eastern Oklahoma, in the 1830s. The stone was rediscovered by white settlers, who established the town of Heavener, in 1894. The stone was locally known as “Indian Rock,” because the carvings were presumably made by a Native American.
It was later determined that the carvings were runes, prompting local resident Gloria Farley to embark on a lifelong crusade to prove that the inscription was made by Vikings who had journeyed to Oklahoma nearly 1,000 years ago. She reported the runestone to the Smithsonian Institution, whose directors responded that, although the runic text had been made by someone familiar with Scandinavian grammar, it was doubtful that Vikings inscribed it. Farley persisted in her belief,
however, and was aided by historian Ole Landsverk and cryptanalyst, Alf Monge.
The Heavener inscription consists of eight runes, which reads; GAOMEDAT, or GNOMEDAL. By reversing two runes that appear to be different from the others, the inscription becomes GLOMEDAL, or “Glome’s Valley.” GNOMEDAL can also be translated as “Sun Valley,” “Monument,” or “Boundary.” Alternatively, the inscription could be G. Nomedal. Nomedal is a Norwegian family name.
Monge, the cryptologist, proposed that the inscription was a cryptogram for the date 11 November 1012 A.D. This explained why two runes were from one Norse alphabet and the other six were from another. Monge claimed that Norse markers were known to mix alphabets to conceal dates in crypto puzzles. Several other runestones were found near the towns of Poteau and Shawnee, giving rise to a theory that the runestones were boundary markers. If this is accurate, the translation of Gnomedal as “boundary” may be the correct one.
Even though all attention directed towards the Heavener Runestone has centered around supposed Viking origins, Leslie McRill advanced a theory in 1966 that seems much more plausible. French explorers claimed the entire Mississippi Valley for France in 1682. New Orleans was established in 1718, and became the capital of the French Colony of Louisiana four years later. Louisiana covered the central third of the present-day United States, including all of Oklahoma. Captain Jean Bossu of the French Marines described two German villages upriver from New Orleans in 1751. He had been sent to assume command of a duchy or grant in the Illinois country. Captain Bossu stated that the German villages had earlier settled further up the Mississippi and on the Arkansas River.
As Bossu wrote, “These two villages, peopled with Germans, are the remainder of a grant made in 1720 to Mr. John Law, a
Scottish financier and gambler who formulated a wild Louisiana business speculation scheme in France that led to a financial panic known as the bursting of The Mississippi Bubble.’ The colony was to consist of Germans and Provencals to the number of 1,500; the ground for it was four leagues square, and near a wild nation called the Arkancas (sic); the colony was erected as a duchy... But Mr. Law failed, and the India Company took possession of the goods.”
Leslie McRill maintains that because the French were establishing duchies or grants out of New Orleans, the Heavener Runestone may well have been a marker for such a grant. Dr. Muriel Wright of the Oklahoma Historical Society agreed. Danish archivist, Kaj Monrad, noted that the rune for “n” is written as a Swede would write it. Interestingly, Captain Bossu notes that a Swedish captain supervised the two German villages. Bossu names him as a “Mr. Arntsbourg, who was at the Battle of Poltava with Charles XIII.” There is abundant proof that the French explored and traded along the Arkansas River and its tributaries in present-day Oklahoma during the 1700s. It is also known that the French visited present-day Le Flore County, where Heavener is located. It seems entirely possible that someone familiar with runes, such as Swedish Captain Arntsbourg, inscribed the stone as a boundary marker for one of the French duchies. The alternative of Vikings sailing from Greenland to the Gulf of Mexico, up the Mississippi River, then up the Arkansas River into Oklahoma 1,000 years ago seems highly unlikely. Especially when the only evidence is eight runes carved on a rock.
The French left behind numerous remnants of their culture in North America, as did other Europeans. Yet nothing that can be scientifically verified confirming a Viking society has been uncovered. Experts universally agree on one point; the inscriptions were not Native American in origin. Gloria Farley has claimed that the white settlers in the Heavener area were illiterate and incapable of
carving runic inscriptions. This is of course false, as numerous Europeans wrote extensively of their explorations in this part of North America in the 17th and 18th centuries. The proponents of the Viking origins for the runestones have employed virtually every form of flawed reasoning, including appeal to myth, shifting the burden of proof, argument by authority, irrefutable hypotheses, and others. These are all common methods of pseudo-science favored by proponents of myths and hoaxes.
In a testament to the unending quest for the tourist dollar, both the Kensington and Heavener Stones are the centerpieces of state parks. This despite numerous doubts that have been cast on the Viking hypothesis. The myth of the Vikings in the Midwest will persist as long as verifiable scientific fact and logical reasoning are absent from the beliefs of their proponents.
15th-Century Runestone
Contrary to ill-founded opinions of the Kensington Runestone as a transparent hoax, application of the hard sciences with state-of-the-art research technology has confirmed the 15th-century Norse provenance of its inscription. Also, its re-examination reveals internal evidence for of the runic texts authenticity unknown to scholars in the 1890s, when the Stone was discovered. News on the latest disclosures about the controversial artifact appeared in the December, 2000 issue of Ancient American.
The Kensington Runestone s age could have been determined shortly after its discovery in 1898. But examiners at Washington. D.C.'s Smithsonian Institution scrubbed it clean of all datable evidence.
Minnesota’s Runestone Is Authenticated by Harold Blauzahn
On 8 November 1898, a Swedish immigrant was clearing his Minnesota farmland near Kensington, about 120 miles northwest of Minneapolis, when he made an unusual discovery. Entwined in the roots of an old, dead poplar tree was a peculiarly shaped boulder of graywacke granite, a kind of hard feldspar. Measuring 36 by 15 inches, and 6 inches thick, the rectangular slab was covered on two sides with lines of strange letters. They were runes from a syllabary used by Vikings during the Middle Ages.
Scholars in the archaic Scandinavian languages were able to translate the inscription, which described a company of Norsemen arriving in what is now Minnesota from across the North Atlantic Ocean, 130 years before Columbus supposedly discovered the New World. A revised translation first presented by linguistic expert, Dr. Richard Nielsen,
at the Midwest Archaeology Conference, in Minnesota, reads, “We eight Goetalanders and 22 Northmen are on this acquisition expedition far west from Vinland. We had properties near two shelters one day’s march north from this stone. We went fishing one day. After we came home, I found ten men red with blood, dead. Ave Maria, save us from evil! I have 10 men by the sea to look after our ships 14 days’ travel from this site. Year of the Lord 1362.”
The Goetalanders cited in the inscription were from the Swedish island of Gotland. Vinland was located in what is presently the state of Maine. Condemned almost universally as a self-evident fraud by conventional archaeologists for more than 100 years, the Kensington Runestone, as it came to be known, is still championed by a smaller number of less closed-minded professionals. They insist that proper testing should be undertaken before its identity as a modern hoax or a prehistoric artifact be conclusively ascertained. They were particularly motivated by the renowned Smithsonian Institution in 1999, when its cynical directors planned to exhibit the Runestone around the country as an example of bogus archaeology.
Interestingly, the Washington, D.C. Institution has been accused by more than one researcher of deliberately destroying material evidence unfavorable to current belief-systems in Columbus as the sole discoverer of America. Instead of joining the traveling carnival show run by the Smithsonian medicine men, curators at the Kensington Runestone Museum, in Alexandria, Minnesota, turned over their controversial artifact to real scientists for serious study. Some results of present testing were presented for the first time during the Midwest Archaeology Conference held at St. Paul’s Raddison Hotel, 10 November 2000. Among the presenters was archaeologist, Alice Keyhoe, who pointed out that the date inscribed on the Stone, A.D. 1362, represented a moment in time of complimentary significance. Just 13 years before, Scandinavian populations had been decimated by the Black Death. One-half to two-thirds of the inhabitants of Northern Europe died within 24 months of its onset in 1349.
Contributing to this catastrophe were predatory merchants of Germany’s Hanseatic League. Theirs was a corporation of Baltic states formed into an economic alliance for the acquisition of large, valuable territories from the ailing Swedes and Norwegians. In 1360, Keyhoe said, the Hansa took over the vital sea-ports at Bergen and Skahne, rendering the Scandinavian kingdoms almost bankrupt. It was then that the Swedish and Norwegian monarchs began developing longdistance trade routes as far afield as Novgorod, in the Ukraine, and Byzantium.
To make matters worse, they learned of an Oxford friar who published a book about his travels to Greenland and unknown territories further west. Concerned that the English would beat him to the discovery of new resources, Norway’s king, Magnus Eriksson, issued a royal decree in 1355, ordering a fact-finding mission to investigate conditions of Greenland’s Norse colony and beyond. Headed by Count Paul Knudsen, the expedition returned in 1364, just two years after the date appearing on the Kensington Runestone. The report he delivered to the new king, Hakon Magnussen, described his adventure as a “journey of discovery.”
To underscore this historical context in which the Kensington Runestone was inscribed, Keyhoe remarked that similar runestones are most abundant in Sweden, where they were likewise erected as memorials to the dead. So too, the text of the Minnesota runestone tells of a mixed company of Swedes, some of whom died at the hands of American aboriginals. Some 5,000 runestones are known throughout Scandinavia, most of them in Sweden.
Researcher Barry Hansen spoke at the Conference of the “bulletproof” testing he organized to unlock the Kensington Runestones secrets. The professional geologist he engaged was Scott Walter, who said his investigations revealed that most if not all of the artifacts runes had been individually “gone over” with a modern tool sometime after the object’s discovery at the close of the 19th century, probably to make the weathered letters more easily discernible. This tampering caused skeptics to declare that the inscription had been newly created.
But Walter’s microscopic scrutiny of the runes showed that the modern scratches were made on top of the original runes carved centuries earlier, as indicated by oxidation residue surrounding each of the written characters. Comparing variously weathered areas of the Stone’s exterior likewise suggested a date for its inscription anterior to the 1898 discovery by at least several hundred years. Another new find comprised a series of chisel marks someone made to break the Stone free from a larger boulder, something the old Minnesota farmer was unlikely to have done on behalf of a hoax from which he received only lifelong scorn, not profit.
Dr. Nielsen demonstrated that arguments most commonly used to fault the Runestone’s Norse provenance actually helped establish its artifactual identity. Opponents of its pre-Columbian authenticity insisted that certain words, numbers, grammatical marks, and individual letters of the inscription were not found among Scandinavian runic writing until historic times. The English “fromm” for example, appears in the Kensington text, but was allegedly unknown to 14th-century Scandinavians. Nielsen, however, found contemporary Swedish manuscripts that do indeed use “fromm.” The letter “J,” too, supposedly never appeared as a rune, until Nielsen produced several 14th-century examples.
Conventional scholars argued that the highest runic number was only 19. Yet, the number 22 is cited in the Minnesota inscription. Dr. Nielsen presented 14th-century runes going as high as 26.
An early expert in Old High German pointed out what he took for umlauts over several of the Kensington runes and concluded that the Stone must be fake, because umlauts were not introduced until the 17th century. The double dots do not represents umlauts, however, but were part of a grammatical convention in use throughout the 1300s.
Perhaps the most persuasive of Dr. Nielsen’s evidence was that of an “E-dialect” evidenced by the Kensington Runestone inscription. Olof Ohman, the Swedish immigrant who found the Stone and was subsequently accused of faking it, spoke an “A-dialect” used in his native Rosander; he was ignorant of the “E-dialect.” The text mentions
a mixed crew of Goths, or men from Gothenland and the island of Skahne, where the “E-dialect” was spoken.
In a paper distributed to Conference members before his presentation, researcher Arne Brekke pointed out that no less than 11 Medieval rune-forms on the Kensington Stone were unknown to scholars in Ohman’s day, but have since proven correct. Also, a dozen old Swedish words (some only recently found) not published in any Middle Ages lexicon of the late 19th century appear on the Runestone. It additionally features Medieval manuscript abbreviations unknown to Scandinavian experts in 1898. In order for Ohman to have faked the Runestone, he would have had to induce “Mineralization within the carved out runes after they were carved,” said Brekke, and “induced mica degradation on the split side of the Stone to match a five hundred-year effect.”
In 1974, when a hedge was constructed for a memorial plaque in the place where the Stone was found, workers uncovered rock fragments of the same material as the Kensington Runestone. They were located about 60 centimeters (23.62 inches) below the ground surface. This is a clear indication that the Stone was cut in the place where it was found, and long before Ohman’s time.
In a statement faxed after the Conference, Barry Hansen declared that “the Kensington Runestone has 24 rune-forms which were ‘strange’ according to the experts, who then concluded that it was a fraud. All were later proven to have been in use on the island of Gotland in Medieval times. Several of them were unknown to any expert in the world in 1898. These experts claimed that the forger (an uneducated farmer) ‘invented’ them, when the experts themselves could not explain them. The Kensington Runestone has about a dozen words that were claimed by numerous experts to be ‘impossible for the 14th century, and, therefore, the Runestone is a fraud.’ Those words have now all be found in the Medieval records of Dalsland, Bohuslan, and Vastergothland (all in the same area of western Sweden), and verified in the peer review process. If no expert in the early days of the controversy knew, then how did the forger?”
“The Kensington Runestone displays a pentadic numbering system for the date and six other number groups. This was declared to be impossible. It has now been shown to not only have been possible, but likely for someone from Godand in the 14th century.” Hansen said further testing is planned for the immediate future. “Over the next few years, we hope to look closely at mica degradation, mineral formation, coatings and alterations using scanning electron microscopy, differing weathering of calcite-graywacke, incipient weathering with 3-D laser imaging, differential mineral absorption as a result of standing up-right in the ground, a root stain on the backside of the Kensington Runestone, detailed analysis of the effect of iron tools used to carve the stone, origin of the original Greenbelt graywacke boulder, and more.”
Though additional testing must reveal more information about the Kensington Runestone, its professional skeptics, in their traditional refusal to consider data contrary to consensus-reality, will just as surely refuse to budge from entrenched opposition to its Old World inscription. But their intransigence is rendered irrelevant by the facts, which confirm that the controversial Stone is an authentic monument to Norse sea-farers in Minnesota long before Columbus landed on the beach at San Salvador.
Heavener Runestone
Cyclone Covey, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus at Wake Forest University, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. One of the very few academic luminaries courageous enough to brave the opposition of his scholastic peers, he has been an outspoken proponent of cultural diffusionism for more than 40 years. The “futhark” he mentions in his article for the May/June, 1994 issue of
Ancient American is the name of the runic alphabet, comprising its first five letters; the third and fourth were combined in a single glyph. At least three different “futhark” sets are known, and were created centuries apart. Their appearance on the Heavener Runestone points up the Norse authenticity of its single, inscribed word.
Oklahoma’s Giant Runestone by Dr. Cyclone Covey
During the 1830s, soon after the forced removal of aboriginal tribes into Indian Territory, Chocktaw hunters roaming Oklahoma’s vast, vacant, forested hills came upon a huge, mysteriously inscribed stone in the idyllic vale of Poteau. There it had stood immemorially hidden in its remote ravine for more years than anyone could guess. In the following century, a local girl first hiked to the stone when no path yet led the 2 miles uphill from her home in Heavener. A precocious youngster, Gloria Farley realized that the large characters carved on the “Indian Rock” were not ordinary letters. They were runes belonging to the written language of Northern Europeans in the Middle Ages.
In 1951, after moving back to Heavener from Ohio, she renewed her childhood interest in the stone by clearing away obscuring lichen growth, measuring the protective semicircle of 40-foot-high, overhanging cliffs, and began a serious study of this “ancient billboard,” as she described it. The huge stone in question was an upright gray slab of very hard, fine-grained, Pennsylvanian Savanna sandstone, 12 feet high, 10 feet wide, and 16 feet thick. According to geologists, it once fell off the cliff above and landed in its present position many thousands of years ago.
The one-word inscription of the Heavener Runestone could only have been left by someone conversant in Old Norse.
The large runes, 6 1/2 to 9 1/2 inches high, stretch horizontally nearly 2 yards across the west face of the smooth rock face. Tool marks, one-quarter to three-sixteenth inches deep, were detectable although the sharp-chiseled edges had been rounded by long-term weathering, despite the natural shelter. Glorias name and investigation of the “Heavener Runestone” were already famous throughout Oklahoma by the time I examined the cause celebre of her life in May, 1965. That was before it was fenced off in a state park. A few days later, I beheld a replica of the Ruthwell Cross and other large British runestones in the National Museum of Scotland that bore the same and similar characters as their Oklahoma counterpart. Even then, no special acumen was required to recognize that the Heavener engraving consisted of letters from the older, 24-rune futhark, not the later 16-rune futhark or any combination of the two.
Two years following my first visit to Heavener, Norwegian cryptologist Alf Monge claimed to have identified six of the Oklahoma runestones letters from the older, longer futhark, together with but two from the later set, in order to decipher the inscription as a
medieval crypto-puzzle signifying a specific date: November 11, 1012, or St. Martin’s Day. A former army cryptanalyst, Monge went on to assume that every alleged runestone in North America similarly recorded important dates, all of which fell in the 11th century, because Thorfinn Karlsefni’s saga-attested expedition to Vinland took place after 1000 A.D. By that time, however, the old style of certain Heavener rune-forms had already fallen out of use for nearly 500 years.
Minnesota’s Kensington Runestone is unquestionably inscribed with the year 1362 A.D., and its grisly message is consistent with 14th century style runes. But the Heavener Runestone is in third, to 5th century style. Monge interpreted its single, inscribed GNOMEDAL to make his date come out right. In 1961, the expert in Viking culture, Frederick Pohl, himself of Norwegian descent, translated GNOMEDAL from the Old Norse as “Gnome Valley” (dal is “valley” in Norse), perhaps a reference to the relatively gnome-like aboriginal inhabitants of the Poteau Valley in which the Heavener Runestone is found. Other investigators decided the inscription was not a word. It makes a quaint, appropriate name for a miniature vale or dell, such as gnomes (Indians that Vikings referred to as Skraelings, a term meaning “Screechers”).
Runes in the same evolving styles were written in differing dialects: Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and Anglo-Saxon. The discovery that Anglo-Saxon was still spoken in isolated pockets of Sweden astounded 19th-century philologists. How to get Anglo-Saxon writers to Oklahoma during the Heavener rune-style of 200 to 500 A.D. beats me. The eminent scholar of Danish history, Dr. Richard Nielsen demonstrated what should never have come into question; namely, that the Heavener inscription uses a single alphabet. Yet, he had to stretch it to a 10th-century precedent in order for it to read GLOMETHAL, deciding D is “th” after a vowel, which does not make any difference, because thal and dal mean the same thing: dell or vale.
Glom (usually Gla) is a proper name in a 1014 A.D. Norse saga for a “ghostly looking man,” related to the Old Norse glamr for “moon,” the modern Swedish glama, “to stare,” and the English “glamour.” Nielsen went on to suggest that in some dialects e might have replaced standard a for genitive, thus his solution: “Glom’s Valley.” He did not fail to point out that Glomdal and Glomstad exist as place-names in Norway. Right or wrong in his transliteration / translation, Nielsen realized the Heavener Runestone dated to possibly 800 A.D., or a little before or after, stretching the date to catch the beginning of Viking expansion, which, however, commenced after the new futhark had come into vogue.
The Heavener form of n and o changed in England during the course of the fifth century. If the Heavener inscription is Anglo-Saxon, then it should date before 500 A.D. At least it derived from the style of that period. The celebrated navigator/linguist Paul Chapman, transliterated the Oklahoma runes in retrograde: LADEMONG in a novel reading of the old futhark characters. Assuming them to be Norse, he recognized a closer relationship to Old English laeden, “to lead,” than to the Old Icelandic lada (modern Icelandic leida) or the Danish lede. Norse lada, Chapman found, alternatively means “to invite” or “bid,” whereby the word would mean something such as “Come barter,” or “Trading Post.” Dr. Berry Fell, in Saga America, strangely read the O as R, and the word as Gnrmedaedt, and was unwontedly baffled as to its meaning.
At least four of the Heavener-region runestones lie in a northwest-southeast line, Gloria Farley perceived, lending credence to the smaller runic specimens as boundary markers. The Warner Stone, found during December, 1972, by a boy in a field near Dirty Creek, an Arkansas tributary, between Warner and Muskogee in east-central Oklahoma, consists of three characters, of which only the X corresponds to futhark runes. They could nevertheless read OCHS in Greek or QATTA in Libyan. The Poteau Runestone, which Wes Thomas relocated in February, 1959, after seeing it 45 years before on a ledge about 10 miles north of
the Heavener specimen—higher on the same Mt. Poteau—shares the first three characters, the fifth, and sixth with the Heavener inscription, also perhaps the seventh, an L in forward, instead of reverse position, and “stung” with an added, little cross-stroke. The word seemingly reads GNOIEAELD, which sounds Norse or Anglo-Saxon enough.
Joseph, F (2006). Discovering the mysteries of ancient America : lost history and legends, unearthed and explored. USA: Mark Book Press
The approximate dozen runic inscriptions Farley tracked from the Arkansas side of the Arkansas River, west perhaps 200 miles, include an elegantly carved specimen at the highest elevation of Tulsa; another on a hillside boulder near the North and South Canadian confluence 75 miles west of Heavener; and the Shawnee Stone, which was found buried facedown in August, 1969, near a small branch of the North Canadian River, 125 miles west-northwest of Heavener. Two more runic inscriptions were reported 200 miles west of Heavener. Farley was able to relocate both, which ignorant homesteaders may have destroyed as they did to many verified artifacts. Often buried or lichen-covered, inscriptions are hard to find and read as it is.
The red Permian-sandstone Shawnee Stone reads in unequivocal futhark: MYRDOC, which might be the name of a man buried in the immediate vicinity or, as Chapman discerned, an unnamed man murdered there: Myrda in Old Icelandic means “to conceal a murdered body.” The Byfield, Massachusetts runes are in the same style and read: NIOIC. N and O are in common with the Heavener inscription; the C is the same as the Shawnee rune text; and an identical / is found among the Poteau and Tulsa Runestones.
The Heavener sequence so nearly matches Byfield in style that Gloria Farley thought the same hand carved both of them a year apart. The regional dispersal of these Oklahoma runestones and the conformance of their shared stylistic elements with original Norse runestones in Scandinavia points out their Medieval (or earlier) provenance. All were, moreover, discovered near important watAerways that could have carried a people skilled in navigation deep into the interior of Oklahoma and to the sea.
Despite its dismissal as a transparent hoax by conventional archaeologists emotionally unable to tolerate contrary evidence, the Heavener Runestone is secure today in its own park, protected from all ignorant persons who would harm it. Whether its single word proclaims a thousand-year-old trading center or a valley of gnomes, the “ancient signboard” is enduring testimony to the arrival of the Northmen in what is now Oklahoma, centuries before Christopher Columbus was born.
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