Thinking Sideways: The Kensington Runestone

I actually think this one is really really interesting. It is not so big, but it was heavy. Yeah. I had a really hard time in the research of this. Just there's so you and I talked about this earlier. Is it? There's a lot of minutia in it, and I did I started to get ahead. Ye happen. Yeah, we're going to talk about the Kensington runestone today. R

It's runestone. In eighteen nine, a Swedish immigrant named Olaf Allman found a two hundred pounds slab of sandstone also called graystone because it's gray but it's sandstone, in Solemn, Minnesota. It was found when he was clearing an area of what some websites report is unclaimed, but upon further digging. Was totally his property, but it was just kind of

an empty unreclaimed yeah, reclaimed maybe, um. But he was clearing trees from it, and he fell a tree and there was a stone that was entwined in the roots. Probably again the stories and I'm inclined to believe that it was entwined in the roots, but well, there's some evidence to show that there were roots growing against it, whether it was on the ground and they were directly under or it was underground. It was it was underground, it wasn't you couldn't see the top of it. You

couldn't see any part of it from the ground. But whether it was actually entwined in the roots or if it was kind of just nearby, hard to tell. And this is this is not like a oh the Internet retelling. It's hard to tell. Literally, the three people that were there when I was discovered, none of them can agree, Like they don't remember actually what day it was found, or like what time of day or what exactly they were doing or anything like that. One of those situations.

One of those. So that's why you know, I witness testimony is it's hard, Well, it's so varied. One person said, oh, yeah, it was November eight, and the other one said, no, it was August eleven, right, eleven eight or eight eleven. Think, yeah, it's hard to tell, so we're just gonna say I think it was entwined in roots in the fall of the Fall of eight. He named this stone after the closest settlement, which was Kensington, because I thought Minnesota he was,

but that's like the county area. The closest settlement was town Village. I guess it was very small, large settlement with that grouping of people. The stone was covered in ruins and was said to be from about thirteen sixty two.

I'm sorry the year at thirteen sixty two. It apparently tells the account of some Scandinavian explorers, and if this is the case, many of our listeners will have already realized that means that these Scandinavian explorers managed to quote unquote discover right the New World like a hundred years before Christopher Columbus, actually well over a hundred years because a little because I wait, if you think about Europeans coming here, you know, like the British and everybody like that,

they settled on the coast. But we didn't actually penetrate as far into the interior. Is this for a long time after that? Right? So yeah, so yes, you're right, more than a hundred years before, way back. So the stone inscription has been translated a number of different ways. We're just going to use the text that's on Wikipedia to start with, and then we'll talk about some of the discrepancies later. Got it. So this is our baseline. This is our baseline. What I would say is pretty

much accepted as the translation. Uh, the sorry, and I should mention the front of the stone and then one of the sides of the stone are carved, so we've got it's kind of a monolith in terms of shape, it's a rectangle. We've got four faces too, you know, the front and back that are larger, and then two

slimmer sides, and then the top and the bottom. Yeah yeah, And there's nothing on top and nothing on top and bottom, nothing on the back one of the sides or the back, but something on the well, I guess you know what you'd call the front and one of the sides. Okay, I think it's the front, then they is it the right side? If you were looking directly at the inscription, I believe it's the right side. The left side, is it?

I think so? Okay. So the front says eight Gotlanders or Swedes and twenty two Northmen or north Norwegian Norwegian. On this acquisition, journey from Vinland, far from the west, we had a camp by two shelters. One day's journey north from this stone, we were fishing. One day after we came home we found ten men red from blood and dead. Maria saved from evil. And then the side says, there are ten men by the inland sea to look

after our ships. Fourteen days journey from the peninsula or island, year thirteen sixty two, the inland see referring perhaps to

one of the Great lakes. It's possible there's some theories out there that actually this little parcel of land that it was found on, it was found on an incline or like a little grassy knoll area, and that it could have it was kind of rounded by wetland's much further away, but that at that time it could have been that it was more of a wetland lake area, so the waters had receded since receded, but that the place that the stone was found was in fact a small island on a small body of water, but it

could also be a great lake. It's not specified. I've also seen stuff that to answer part of what your question is is that to get there, they went north of the United States where our borders are, came in through Canada, and then that runs you into the Great Lakes. I can't remember the name of the inlet or the channel that you can use, but they use something like I don't know, I mean, there is there was a way to do that. I'm not sure that the lakes

naturally interconnected, and I should know this. You know, they taught me the stuff, and I believe that for the most part, they were maybe not enough to do large shipping vessels like today. That was that man altered that. But they were connected in some fashion, and so I think that that is the research that I was doing about how did they get there. It's that the lakes are loosely interconnected, and so they they theoretically could have

made their way. Doesn't explain where the stone was found, but it gets him into the area. Is yeah, that's a big kind of close to that area. And then then they got to hoof it overland for quite a long ways for me, A little ways for sure. So this stone was found and then kind of held onto a little bit and then allman kind of thought, well, maybe I don't know that it says it's from thirteen sixty two. This was This was his actual thought pattern. In case you guys were wondering, he wrote it down

in his diary. He said, I don't know, like it was kind of from I'm kidding. Sorry. When when he found it was he able to read the ruins himself or decipher them. So this is kind of one of the things about this story that's interesting. Most of the stories that you'll hear there's so there's two camps that you hear this story from, and they're both sure that they're right. One camp is this is a huge hoax, This isn't actually from that time. The other camp is, no,

this is real. And most of the people who say no, this is real, they say it was real because the guy who found it was totally illiterate, which is not the case. This this guy omen was actually he was a Swedish immigrant. He went to school in Sweden where he would have learned runes. So word for word, perhaps not were the US in common usage in the end

of the eighteen hundreds and Sweden. Still. Yeah, that's that's what I wasn't sure because I had seen some stuff that said he would have had books with runes, but wouldn't have necessarily been reading. I mean, it wasn't the it wasn't the number one of the languages, but they were still it was still taught in school, kind of like cursive is still taught in the United States, but taught. Yeah,

they still teach it. Yeah, So it's one of those things right where it's like, well, nobody uses that, but you learn it. And well anyway, so he probably likely would have been able to decipher at least some of it. Regardless. It was an old stone he found on his property and he thought, hey, maybe we should get this assessed by somebody. So it was first assessed for authenticity by

a professor at the University of Minnesota. And it's unclear if this professor saw the actual stone, like they actually took the stone to him to look at, or if one of these copies of texts written copies of the text were just sent to him. That would be a lot easier, and if it would be a lot easier, but it's been mentioned that most of the written copies of the text were kind of poorly and crudely done.

Well were they handwritten copies or were they rubbing? I think they were handwritten copies, like somebody who sat down and tried to write them, and that it may have been copied by somebody who didn't actually write rooms that often or didn't know so that it seems to be there's definitely some speculation that, uh, the written copies of these rooms were not good, maybe to the point of detrimentally to people being able to tell if linguistically it

was correct or not. And a lot of the copies written copies of these have like very big differences in it, uh, lots of discrepancies happening. So I think it's likely that he actually just saw a piece of paper. Um, but he dismissed it immediately. He said it was a really poor attempt at forgery. And like I said, I can't tell with accuracy if if he you know, saw the paper or not, but if you saw the real thing, yeah, if it was the paper, I I just want to say, like, well,

how would he know? And professor of linguistics linguistics, yeah, specializing in um, Norse and Swedish, Scandinavian ruin and language studies. So he didn't like it. He didn't what next? Then? The stone, the actual stone, as far as I can tell, uh In, was sent to Northwestern University. The opinion there as that while the stone itself was pretty weathered, the

inscription seemed to be lighter and done more recently. The stone was photographed, and um, apparently some archaeological venture was done kind of near where the stone was lightly but I don't think it was any It wasn't like a huge scale. They weren't, you know, thinking, oh, there's a huge settlement here, we gotta dig six No. I think it was just kind of some slight excavation around where he said he found the stone, just to see. But he had been clearing the land, so it's not as

though he wasn't preserving it. You know, he didn't find the stone and go oh oh, no, I better stop felling all these trees and make sure that somebody could find something if there is anything. Oh yeah, I can see A year later, Um, I think it was over there. But that is literally what happened. I mean, they started interviewing the three people right and as I said, like, they couldn't even agree on what month they had found it,

let alone where they had found it. So well, if he's if he's working the land and he's clearing trees and he's changing the topography. I don't know if either of you have ever been to a construction site where they're doing major grade work. But you go on on day one and you've got a good idea where things are, and and then if you leave for a week, you're kind of lost because by the time you come back

everything has changed. But stretched that over the course of a year, and you just kind of keep getting used to it a little bit by a little bit and don't quite remember where things were before. That's easy to understand why they had no idea where they found it.

True that I don't know if they all saw. They didn't even see the ruins to begin with, right, I mean, when when they first covered the stone, you know they saw they saw they did, actually they saw a part of it and they tried to clear This is another thing that affects the They the ruins on the side were cleaned off with a nail. They just took a nail and scraped away, which would obviously alter the ability

to actually accurately date when that had happened. Um, and that's part of the reason that they had a different color because they were freshly scraped. So again it's you know, it's hard to tell with that if they just did a really good job scraping the runes Queen so they could see what was going on or what happened there. Regardless, nothing was reported to be found from this excavation, exploration,

whatever you want to call it. And the stone was returned to Omen in March of eight and since everybody said it was pretty much just worthless, it wasn't really an artifact. It was you know, totally fake. He just used it as a stepping stone, uh, like the kind of entryway stepping stone to his granary. Just stuck it right in there, ruins down. He wasn't treading on the runes, but he did. He just used it as a as

the entry stone. Well the backside is the flat side, Yeah, so of course they'd be the one he uses a step Yeah, so he just did that. Yeah, don't get no respect. Yeah, so interest waned in this rude stone. But it had been kind of a big media you know, been shipped around a little bit. Yeah, but there, you know, there had been some newspaper articles. It had been kind of a big deal. Everybody said, that's a hoax. And he said, all right, fine, it's a hoax. I'm going

to use it as a stepping stone. A historian. Mr. Holland was investigating the possibility of a Norwegian settlement in Minnesota and became aware of the stone and became, of course very interested in the stone as it might provide some I don't know, evidence or something like that. So he uh went over to the Kensington area and spoke with Almond about the stone, um, and they pulled it out of the ground and he examined it, and at about this time, the Minnesota Historical Society decided, Oh, I

guess we'll investigate this too. Okay, guys, oh I guess we should because it's popular again, Yeah, that people are. The fact that Holland got interested in it, he kind of really drummed up a lot of support for it, for its authenticity. He he thought it was real really kind of from the get go, you know, it was kind of one of those confirmation bias things where he he thought, oh, yeah, the Norwegians totally settled this area

way earlier than we think. And then he heard about the stone and he said, see, it's totally it's real. Of course that's real, because I've been thinking this thing and now I found some proof for it. The Minnesota Historical Society hired a man named Newton Winchell, and he started collecting Affidavid's from the people who were there when

the stone was found and then also family and friends. Yeah. Yeah, kind of trying to, you know, collect the stories of it and see if maybe they had created this forgery or anything like that. Uh. And he was also a geologist, so they thought that he would probably be a pretty good person to carry out this investigation. I don't I don't know why, but he interviewed a lot of locals as well as omens family, and interviewed Holland and some linguists. And the linguists pretty much to a one said no,

this is this is a hoax. But Holland and Witchell, we're both really convinced that it was real. For a number of reasons that will lay out in a couple of minutes. Holland and Winchell definitely thought it was real. The reason that they think it's real is because linguists by and large are saying that this, the language used on this stone is not consistent with with eleventh century

Scandinavian grammar, which is fair. The linguists were saying that it was a poor forgery of eleventh century Scandinavian grammar, and you know, uh, it should be fourteenth century. So I'm not totally sure why it's the eleventh century that they're talking about in terms of grammar. And you know, as we know, language is a living thing, so it

does change. It allows people to be able to pinpoint and say this is when this language is from, based on the slang or the way that grammars used, or cases or things like that in some In some languages, that is true, I know, for both the written and the verbal form. For some other languages, though, I know that though the spoken version may you know, ebb and wane back and forth and change, the written version is not to make a pun here, but it's set in stone.

It is one way. This is how it's done, and it's not built to be flexible, and it's not allowed to be flexible. So I wonder if that's why they're saying it's not consistent with the eleventh century. And I unfortunately I read this as well in the research and never thought to look into that. But I wonder if that's the reason is that there was they say from time A to B it didn't it did never change. Yeah,

I I think probably that's the case. I also think you've to take into consideration how long this group would have had to have been traveling to make it to Minnesota. So I think they, you know, kind of backlook obviously not three years. They weren't. They weren't obviously for three years. But if you can say, you know, maybe fifty years

then or even ten, I don't know. I don't know how long it takes Scandinavians to get across the ocean at this time and then and then make landfall and then make it all the way to minnesotaeh he was. I could take a while. It would take it's it's about a six to nine months journey. I'm ballparking here. I'm guessing to get from one to the other across the ocean, and then from there the exploration process would

be long and drawn out. So I can see where I could see where ten maybe even fifteen years maybe, but I would imagine guys would get homesick after a while. Yeah, you would think. But also they were here. If they were around that long, you think there'd be more artifacts left over. Yeah, yeah, yes, that's true. The stone's ownership. You may be wondering, well, who owned the stone, because Olman owned it for a while. Well, he owned it until nineteen o seven, at which point Holland purchased it

for I believe it was ten dollars. Well it was, you know, ten dollars in early nine hundreds, so that's a lot more than we normally think of it. But when you hear how much he tried to sell it for, you will galyze it was absolutely a good deal. He tried to sell it to the Minnesota Historical Society for five thousand dollars in nineteen ten. Holland and, well, that's some serious appreciation. It is. Obviously they said no, thank you.

But in nineteen forty eight on the I guess I haven't really mentioned that the authenticity of the stone has never really been like a yes, everybody says it's uh this it's a hoax, or it's not. It's never been agreed upon. It's always had this huge ebb and flow. So it's gone through periods of legitimacy, validated by this fact that in nineteen forty eight, the stone was on display at the Smithsonian Institute in d C. For a

full year. And they don't really they don't put things they think are fake in the in the usually not normally not Usually they've displayed things they've discovered later on we're fake. But everything they can discern it's real. That's the only reason to go up. Yeah. So the curator actually said of the stone that it is quote probably the most important archaeological object yet found in North America unquote when it was in the Smithsonian apparently, so he

really thought it was real. Obviously, after the year long display in the Smithsonian, the stone was set up as a permanent exhibit or I guess, the only exhibit at the room Stone Museum in Alexandria, Minnesota. I was just thinking, man, this to be. It can't be the most exciting museum to go to. Hey, kids, we're gonna take field trip. Okay, next stop is this thing that's our only stop? Actually

a stone? Yeah? And next up a stone? Yeah? Yeah, I think it's kind of an interpretive center as well, right, I mean it can't. It's not just a stone in the middle of a room. Um, it did. It also was shown at the New York World's Fair. It got around. It did get around it. Uh. It also went to

Norway for a year or two. It's so it's been around and again, you know, it's been this evan flow of how you know, when people are like on the yeah, it's real train and goes to interesting places, and when people are on the no, it's fake train, it stays boring. I say it's real. It's a rock for sure. It's definitely rock. I would agree with, Yeah, that's it. Okay, it's rock. So if you want to email us, you know, we got to talk about theories. Okay, there's many of them.

There's a few, you know, my mo and I was about to say, I'm looking at this, I'm like, wait a minute, you broke this up into two very big categories. There's four categories. Yeah, just look harder, Steve, there's four categories. Technically, yeah, yeah, that's a technicality. Yeah. But as I've said, I will say again, I will continue to say. Everybody who's ever written about the Runestone is a percent sure that they are right, that it is either totally a hoax or

totally not. There's very little stuff out there about somebody's saying, well, it could be this, and I did find two theories and both of them are good. I think that kind of land sort of in the middle. But pretty much everybody else is in their camp. All right, let's let's camp one. Camp one is it's a hoax. Okay, here's why this word that I'm gonna make Joe pronounce them that I'm gonna spell, but I I know I'm mispronouncing that. Well,

it's a Norse word. Yeah, it's spelled O p d A g E l s e f A r d, which was the word that's translated into voyage of discovery. And apparently it did not occur in the Norse language until several centuries after the thirteen sixty two inscription date, putting it in approximately the sixteenth century. There's a bit of controversy regarding this issue because one of the ruins, which is the thirst room the theory as run it, so it can be used in a number of different ways.

Ruins are kind of tricky that way. Ruins are phonetic in that right, So it's not like each room equates to one letter in the English language that spells out a word that probably doesn't even sound like you think it's going to sound because we don't say words the right way. It's each room represents a sound. Okay, nodding slowly in this student, Yes, I'm on, I'm on board with that, all right. So there is a run that's

used in that word. Um, the thirst run is how I'm going to pronounce it, and it could have been used to represent a t sound, which would have made the word that we spelled earlier, the obstacle per credit card, into a different word, which means journey of acquisition, which was a standard word that was used in the century, instead of the journey of discovery, which is the word that it's commonly translated as, which wasn't common until the

sixteenth century. Okay, because as you say, I know I had seen some sources that when I saw the translation, it was really weird because it was it was a word slash word slash word slash, you know, voyage of something something something something something and pick it was like choose your own adventure. Yeah, and so I will mention that if this run is used to represent the t sound it's used, it's the only place it's used to represent that sound in the on the entire rune stone.

They use the more standard runes to represent that sound everywhere else. But it is speculated that it was that use of that word. I don't know. Maybe it's like I can't spell available to save my life, right, everybody has those words where it's like I think it's spelled this way, which I don't know. Maybe that so this guy had a little block when it came to that word. And you're carving in stone. It's not like you can erase, go back. You know, that doesn't exist. It's just whatever

it is. The next issue is the issue of cases on the stone as No, it's that in like tenses. Okay, I was just trying to make sure because I never noticed. I always think of cases as upper and lower case like we do in English, so that's why I was just I never saw anything like that. Runs are very uniform, so that's why I was confused by that. Yeah, it's it's um like the you know, plural singular I we

view them. Okay, that that that makes more sense, and I always struggle with linguistics, so this is why I asked this question. Until the fifteenth century, there were four cases in the North Scandinavian language that the Ruin Stone is written in UH, and that was later abandoned for two cases, which is simpler. It's a good idea, yea think. So please don't ask me a lot of detail because I am not linguistics person. I didn't want to delve too deep into this because it would be an hour

and a half on is why these cases are this way? Yeah, it's this is not such a inter shattering mystery. I agree, I absolutely agree. You can afford to spend weeks and weeks and weeks learning about this stuff. Yeah. Anyway, apparently the stone uses just the two cases instead of the more common four cases, which would have been common at the time. Again, not really, as Joe was saying, a problem for me, as much you're carving in stone, you got like ten dead people next to you. It's not

that long. It's not that long of a it's not that long of a text. So while people who are way better versed in linguistics than me may shout, yes, that is totally shattering and it's strong proof against this being real. I don't think it's that big of a deal. It's what what was it? Ten lines eight lines long? Is what this is? That's it. Yeah, it's there's not a lot of room for messing around anything kind of yeah. Yeah, so you're not going to get all fancy with it.

And by the way, they I don't think they had the corpses right next to them. I think they were like a day's ride away or something like that. Okay, sorry, we'll forget about painting a beautiful picture. Okay, waxing pot. You had a bunch of corpses. Yeah, apparently I don't read runes, so I cannot confirm or deny this. But apparently, according to some sources, the inscription uses the English spelling of dead, not d E A D, but d E D with runes phonetically instead of what the Norse world

would have been. Again, I can either confirm nor deny, but this is something that people say. Yeah, no, I also have to ride through the middle of that one, okay, or maybe maybe dead beats something else in Scandinavian. One would presume that the people who were translating it wouldn't know that though instead of saying no, it's spelled the wrong way, you would hope. Yeah. And finally, as we mentioned before, the stone itself was weathered, but the inscription

wasn't weathered. So the stone was obviously a very old stone, but the inscription itself looked much newer. So, you know, the edges weren't as degraded as you would expect to see given the age, and where that you would expect to see on fine lines like that Steve's looking, and not cut very deeply into the stone really, so you would see a lot of where if it was exposed to the elements, like on the edges of what's the ruins that have been carved, they wouldn't it was if

it was above ground the whole time. Yeah, I can see that. That's exactly my point to write. It was buried, So I don't think it was meant to be buried. I don't think it was originally buried. There's a lot of evidence to suggest that it was put upright like a like a headstone almost. Yeah, Yeah, so it was part of it was buried and then the rest of it got buried over time. You would expect to see probably more where than necessarily you see currently on it.

But again it comes back to you know, they cleaned it off with a nail, like who knows? Who knows? So if this is a hoax, the next big question is who created the hoax? Who created Well, he has been number one suspect right then, of course is the number one suspect, And I don't think it was him. What would you know? The is one of those things I asked this every time we talked about a hoax. What are you going to get out of the hoax?

Like he actually made ten bucks? Well, no, ignoring the financial gain, I mean easy trying to to get some notoriety out of it, like I never understand what people hope to gain from from pulling the wool over people's else. Well, that for me is I think the biggest reason that I don't think it's Almen, right. I mean, he found it eventually brought it to people's attention. They said it's a hoax. Here have it back, and he said, okay, I'm just going to use it as a stepping stone.

Then yeah, exactly. He didn't. He was never a vocal advocate for its authenticity. He was always throughout the entire time just kind of standing back saying I found this thing. Is it? What is it? And people said, here, it's this thing, and he goes Okay. You would think that if somebody had the wherewithal to make a hoax like that, they would be brazen enough to keep pushing that it was real. I mean we see this all the time.

How many books have come out in the past decade that are supposed to be pure fact and they turn out to be pure fiction, But the person who wrote it just continually, you know, goes on TV and does everything they can to defend that it's real. Those people and they've got big brass ones, they are just they're holding it up and this guy didn't do that at all. Yeah.

So yeah, I think that if you're gonna if you're gonna pull off a hoax that involves carving things in stone, to what you want to do is you want to carve the eleventh fift Commandments into a stone tablet. I've found the Lost five Commandments. That's what I would do. Yeah, I know that's what you would do. Yeah, maybe some cool commandments in there too. Uh No, I think it's I think it's definitely not Alman. I think he definitely

isn't the one. So who else created? Right? And I think you know, the other big question is exactly that. And the only other option is that somebody spent some time created this hoax, dropped it off on some abandoned land for a while because it was buried near a tree, right, and the tree was like forty years old, and hoped someone would find it and recognize what it was and bring it to people's attention. So who was the historian was so fascinated by the prospect of Norrisman coming to Minnesota.

Mr Holland, Yeah, so you suspecting him? I don't. I don't because I don't think that he would have left it up to chance as much as that, Right, that's a big risk to take. And he wasn't that old of a man. I mean, if it's if it's in the roots of a forty year old tree, it's had to have been there at least forty years. I got the we'll talk about that, well, ballpark is we'll talk about that. But my my point is I got the impression that he was a forty something to fifty something

year old man, not an eighty year old man. Yes, that's true. He was a younger man, which means that he would have had to done it as an adolescent. Yeah. Well, okay, so the tree itself was forty years old. And again this is one of those facts I go back and forth on in terms of if I what I believe. But apparently, and I don't know how, because they uprooted the tree and it was gone, they didn't count the rings.

I assume they did count the rings, so they said the ring They said, Okay, it's a forty year old tree. Most of the trees around here forty years old. But apparently somebody came and examined the roots and said, oh, no, the roots were disturbed about ten years ago where the

stone was. I don't know how. Okay, I don't know how they would have found that out, But some somebody said, no, no, no, something was buried here, something big was buried here, like ten years ago, disrupting the way that the roots were

growing or something like that. I could see somebody being able to figure that out today with you know, all of the computer technology that we have, because I what I'm getting I'm understanding this to mean is that some yo yo went out to the bottom of that tree dug a big ditch or trench pushed the roots out of the way through the stone, and then covered it back up to make it look like it had been there for longer than it had. Okay, that's that's what

I thought. Man. Roots, It's like a tree branch, you know, it takes a long time before it becomes very very obvious that somebody has tied it up and it's been you know, altered in its growth pattern. Yeah, yeah, okay, I agree with you. I don't know, I totally agree

with you. I um yeah. And I'm also not not so sure that the roots would have survived that long because usually when you clear land, you saw that, you saw out the wood, you know, and take it home, throwing the woodpile or whatever, and then all the all the stomps you're throwing a big pile, you burn them. Yeah. Oh no, I I absolutely agree with you. There's no way that somebody could have unless they examined it on the day. This was an affidavit from somebody who for

whatever reason, examined the roots on the day. Uh, there's no way that they would be able to know. This also worth mentioning this whole forty year thing. The settlements that were in Minnesota in that area at that time, they were very new. White people were buying large not living there forty years ago, so interesting fact for the era.

So for somebody to just create this hoax, drop it and hope that somebody finds it someday, hounds stone into what could be considered hostile herritory and just trying it in the ground and then right away, So that's our segue into it's not a hoax. We touched on the tree, which was kind of one of my first points in that it's not a hoax situation, but it can go wherever. It's fine. Yeah, we kind of arguing that, yeah, we

can move away from it. And then the knoll. We also talked about that it could have been an island almost sorry, the knoll, that the tree with the stone underneath it. This is like, right, the sounds like a

very Lord of the Rings description. I think it's that like bog and the frog on the log and the bog and of anyways, Uh, it could have been and likely was, in fact, an island in the middle of swamp way wetland kind of area, assuming as one should, that the water table was different in Minnesota six hundred years ago because uh the water, the water could have been about fifty feet higher than it currently is, which

would have put water surrounding that knoll. Okay, Does that make it anywhere likely that a chunk of sandstone is going to be sitting there? Though? I think there are two possibilities that it affords. One is that the rock was moved by water to this place, right with rising and lowering lowering tides. So you think the rock was just bobbing in the water and just sort of washed upon. Yeah, I mean, you know, two hundred pound rocks to float.

Just science, there are no nautical hazards. No, yeah, they are, They totally are. It's that that in h icebergs the same thing, right, No, I mean water has been it moves things. It's course, it absolutely is. But also that it could explain that they could have been camping there, that that would have been a place that some people would have been camping. They would have ended up there, and that's why that stone was there, because they could

have gotten there with a boat. It also you also got to think about it from and explorer's point of view. I'm in this body of water, It's an area I don't know. There are people who I don't understand who potentially are hostile. It's safer to make camp on an island, on a high ground, on the high ground rather than on the surrounding mainland because it's nobody. It's harder to sneak up on you. Almost impossible in fact, to sneak up on somebody because you make a lot of noise

waiting through that. Yeah, and also you can see people waiting through them. I mean, you know it's on a little canoe or a boat or whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah, that's I think a pretty good solid fact for why it would be there, except that it just sort of happened to be there and they did some carbon out there. Is that? Is that the idea? Yeah, it's yeah, I guess yeah. Okay. The prayer to marry the Maria that's on the stone. People cite this as something that is

pretty important little bit of history regarding its authenticity. It's it's a Catholic prayer, but the Swedes of Minnesota, we're all Lutheran pretty much, but for the most part at the time, that was the prevalent religion at the turn of the century. But way back in the day, the turn of the Okay, just making sure I knew which centree we were talking about here. So this is the turn of the century when the stones, when if it were a hoax, when this thing would have been made?

Because is it the turn of the nineteenth century? Is that? Is that the year? Is that the year? I never can understand it. I don't even understand why the hell of the nineteenth century is in because it's the eighteens. It totally makes sense. I mean, I get it, but it's dumb. It's confusing. The further we get away from

the first century, the stupider against Yeah. No, but so it's But an interesting fact is that Swedes of the fourteenth century, their hundreds were Catholic, So it makes sense that the prayer that would they would have had would have been all all a maria, not that the Lutheran version of what that might be, which I think is an important fact. I also don't know how much you know that as a Swede in the you know, nineteen hundreds, that's fairly sophisticated fake. If it's a fake, yeah should know.

Oh it happens that these people were a different, totally different religion than me. So I'm going to add their prayer into my hoax of this thing. That's fairly sophisticated. It's not strong, but anyways, I think that's a fair thing to mention. What else have we got here on your bullet point list of it's not a hoax? I love my bullet point list. I love to make fun of them, I know you do. Next is that there are some scholars who attest to its authenticity. The not

the linguists as much, but historians. There are some Well, I've actually seen some really interesting stuff. So this stone has got is it mica that's in the stone? I want to say? And they talk about the weathering of it when you're you know, when you take a microscope

to it and you can see how it's weathered. And they've actually figured out how much the difference of the weathering between the grooves that were cut in the stone versus what is on the face, and it's pretty consistent with the thirteen sixties some year date that's on, which is really compelling. I agree. Again, they're saying that the weathering of the ruins, it's consistent with being six years old. There's six there's a difference between them. So the face

that is exposed has completely weathered away. The mica on is completely weathered out, but the stuff that's in the grooves has about his shows about six hundred years worth of weathering. Now, I can't explain how that works, but that's what I read, and it was like, wow, well that's really scientific. I'm inclined to believe that it sounds science. It's probably true. I would have said that he would have.

Another point that people bring up is the dotted R. I hate the dotted R. I like the dotted R. Do you know what the dotted R? Yeah, but I think they just must took their R for an eye. No. So the way that the R run is done, it looks like an R pretty much like if you we're just going to carve an R in straight lines. Yeah, in straight lines. So it's a've got a vertical line.

You've got from left to right at an approximate degree angle, and then from right to left at a mirror of that angle back into that vertical line, and then you do the same thing to make the tale of the R. That's exactly what an R is. An R is that, well, there's a dot in the middle in the absence area, the negative space, the negative space, thank you, you know, art stuff in the negative space on the top bit of the art. This is why I always described letters. Yeah. No,

so there's a dot there. And apparently this is a thing that only happened really in medieval times, so the hundreds. But that could have it could have just been a defect in the rock face. It's you can see it in all of the rs that are used in the inscription.

It's not just one little dot and this of it because I've only seen one are called out and because there's a there's a huge fight over that are, a stupidly huge fight and it all all of the images that I see are of a single R. I you know, when I look at the inscription, I I think I see them around. I mean I think I see it in all of them. But I could just be that

could be wishful thinking. Okay, Because because I agree with you now that you say, oh, it's always the same are, I realized, yeah, that the one that they do the close up of is always the same ARE. But I'm pretty sure when I look at it, it looks like there's the dotted ARE and all of it. Because you know, I was gonna say it's a single one, because there's always the what's that what do they call it? The

dropped tool theory? Somebody dropped a tool and it just happened to strike there and just happened to mar the stone. So that's why I'm surprised to hear that there are you saw at another place. But you know, I didn't, you know what, I didn't really try to scan it really well. I was just kind of briefly looking at it as as reading the words that I can understand English self. Sure, Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, you know, I haven't really seen enough good close up photos of

the runs to really examine them closet problem. That's the other thing that's hard with it is it's not as though they're taking close ups of, you know, every single little bit. It's just the you know, call out the one room that has this weird thing going on, or as we're about to talk about this one X that's really interesting. It's actually all of the x is. But this this theory is angle. It's angle theory, sub theory, whatever, it's the knights templar angle or the hooked X theory.

I love it when the Night's get involved. Yeah, me too. This this theory posits that the Night Templar, Knights Templar, Nights Templar, we're running from something I think religious persecution about that time for whatever reason. There's some for some reason in the middle of the US um way earlier than any other European descendants would have been. There is some there's some stories that suggest that the Knights Templar

they were. There were a substantial amount of them that were rounded up in the early hundreds and killed, and then the rest of them all disappeared again. This is one of those like that. I don't even know. That's

where the Knights Templar. Knights Templar are so popular because there was a mass execution and a mass disappearances they did, and there are a lot of theories that suggests that they came to America or the New Land and it ties into this other unsolved mystery in the United States called the Newport Tower, which is in Rhode Island, which most people think is a tower that was built, you know, after Columbus got here, but some people say was built

earlier by the Knights Templar. It's I didn't do too much research into that. It's probably its own episode, maybe someday if we feel like it. But so, but anyway, that but the Knights Templar didn't speak Swedish or Norwegian, right they some of them did. They wrote in ruins, some of them. Yeah, according to this theory, I don't. I don't know any of them personally, so I don't know what they wrote and what they didn't write. And

if you did, you couldn't say. I couldn't wink. There's this website that I put up on the research that I know, Steve loved. Yeah, if you mean loved equals loathed. Yeah. It was one of those black background white texts websites. I didn't spend a whole lot of time on it, but it just I don't know why you did that. I thought it was a real source. Okay, that was

a mistake, Steve. It's always a mistake. Uh. It takes aerial photos that they've enhanced of the area surrounding where the stone was found, and they say they're carvings in the earth and if you just draw these lines, they point directly to the temple or the tower in Rhode Island, and also all these other places that are totally knights templar places. So the stone was actually just like a cipher that the Templar Knights left for people. So it's

actually a coded message. Act. It is an insanely detailed encoded message, Like there are numbers and coordinates and degrees in all of this stuff buried in it. And I was reading through the descriptions and I actually started laughing out loud when at one point it said something something, something, which is referenced in the room Stone, and I went back to their translation and couldn't find that in their translation, Like it's a it's a lot of leaps of faith. Yeah,

maybe it's a parody. No, no, no, that's a lot of work for a parody website, those huge seven pages. Anyway, I think that if they were if they arrived in America sometime in the fourteenth century, is this the Night's Templar fleeing persecution, they really didn't need to go as far as as far as Minnesota, because remember, nobody in Europe had any idea that America was here. Well that's not true, but well yeah, but I means still, they could have just chilled on the coast for quite a

long time. They could have. But you know, maybe they were bored. Yeah, you know, maybe they just thought curious, or maybe they were driven off of the coast by the indigenous people. Yeah, I mean, that's that's the thing, is that we've got to remember they weren't the only ones there, and being an alien culture, they're going to be a pariah. They're gonna be chased away every time. Yeah,

pretty much, no matter where they go. So this is the reason that this is also referred to as the hooked X theory is because the X run has a very it's a distinct little hook that you apparently only see with Knights Templar writing. Oh, I didn't make that connection. Okay, it's a distinct style apparent allegedly, I don't. I don't. I can't say for certain if that's true or not.

I guess. The last little interesting bit about the Knights Templar is the Scottish prince slash Templar Knight Henry Sinclair apparently tried to explore North America in thirteen sixty two, So meaning why you got up to a ship and attempted to crossover. Yep, it never was heard from again, Yep, got it. So that's kind of interesting. That isn't true. I don't know why a Scottish prince would write in Norse rooms, but okay, sure, yeah, we don't even know

if you made it to America. Maybe that's what ascribe wrote in maybe. So here are my two favorite theories. Well, these are the ones that are not it is or is not a hope. Well they are kind of well under the main bullets. Yes, that I'm making fun of again. This one is it's not a hoax, but it was carved somewhere else. Well, it's a pretty good theory. It is documented that Newfoundland was found by Norse explorers in uh year one thousand or something like that. Uh, it

wasn't explored. I mean, it wasn't settled or anything, but they kind of thought, but oh look there's land over there. Cool. Yeah, I think that they've found some smart effects, haven't they. Yeah, they have. So it's not impossible. I mean, how it would have made its way all the way to Minnesota, who knows. But it's not impossible to think that interesting journeys had been made back to the New World from Scandinavia over the course of the years, and that they

just happened to leave this stone. Wait, so if I understand what you're saying, you're saying that it is a stone from their native land that they brought with them somehow as a ballast or something. No, I'm saying that it would have been carved like on the coast in new in Newfoundland, in Newfoundland, Yeah, and then brought over, right, So they brought it from their native land. Not necessarily, I don't. I don't even know, but sandstone possibly is

indigenous to Newfoundland's I don't know. Somebody go check a website because that just seems I mean, other than a ballast stone, which I don't know if they used I don't know why they would have packed that stupid thing all that way. They might have. They might have actually had it for a ballast stone. But typically speaking ballast and ships, back in those days, the rocks were used a lot, but you don't usually use enormous ones like that. Yeah, that's that's my point. Yeah, they take up a lot,

a lot of space. There's a lot of air gaps, and they're really hard to get down below decks without breaking your back. And you're in your ship. Yeah, exactly, when guy slips and well that chips under yeah, but so you know, but I maybe they just got it somewhere in Newfoundland and maybe they were actually in places other than Newfoundland, not just maybe they actually had other parts of North America also, Well, I know that type of stone is owned in New England. Yeah, so I

know that it is. It is found in more than one place. It's you know, rocks or rocks. Yeahstone is common. Yeah, and and that that kind of I think they called it what a greystone? Is that right Devon? Yeah? Yeah, greystone is found in a lot of different places. But I just don't know, is it do you know if it's found in Newfoundland? Yeah, it is. I just just to clarify, in Newfoundland is like Northern Canada. It's like Eastern Canada, eastern northeastern Canada. Right, I'm just I'm just

trying to figure out if for the geology. B oh yeah, yeah, it's found all over yeah, so it could have been there. So yeah, yeah, so I can I can see it's it's carved there and it's like left there, and there's certain certain settlers later on find it and they just think, you know, if they happen to be Scandinavian and they

think I've got a great idea. Let's let's ship it to the mainland, and I will pass it on to other Scandinavians and essentially move it far inland as far and known as we can, and and then whom we'll bring it to a lot and say, hey, look how far the Northman went. It's kind of kind of a

matter of ethnic pride. Yeah, you know, I can also see there being a settlement, you know, in Newfoundland, and then as they kind of migrate through, somebody's like, well, this is important, we're abandoning this area, so let's take it with us, you know. But as as you were saying, they found artifacts, and there have been no artifacts found except for the stone in this area, so that's pretty big issue for me. Yeah. Next theory is it's not a hoax, but it's not from thirteen sixty two either.

I believe this one. It is a historical fact that ten Norwegian settlers were killed pretty close to the spot where that stone was found as part of the Sioux Wars. About this, the Sioux Wars that happened in eighteen sixty two. Vaguely, that's that that actually makes a lot of sense. Yeah, for me, that was kind of. I read that and I was like, Oh, that's an AHA moment for me

that it happened close by. You know, there weren't officially a lot of white people living around in that area, but likely there were some, given that some white people died in that area at that time. The carbon the numbers match up pretty well. You know, it could be that it's the typo essentially, is what this all boils down to, Either a typo or maybe a little bit of erosion, Yeah, something like that, And that it was left there as the marker for their fallen comrades. Yeah,

that makes sense got buried. It would have been there forty years, which would fall in line with the whole tree root thing. Yeah, I guess that's what thirty six years. It would explain the weird grammar stuff that's going on right, that it was a mix, because it would have been it wasn't a thing that continued to happen. They're like carving of ruin stones. Run stones were used as like

headstones and markers of important events. So it would have been something that somebody would have harved as a tribute and that they would have probably tried to be hearkening on the traditions of old but probably not knowing enough to do it accurately. Well yeah, well, I mean a lot of people were not that well educated. There were lots of people who could read and sort of read and write, but lots of bad grammar and spelling and stuff. I mean, it's I would say, it's similar to people

trying to do Old English today. You know, for me, I've seen those tattoos. Yeah, I mean everybody has, and it's it's not good old English, but it kind of looks like old English, And I don't know. For me, that's it. That's my I'm done. That's my theory. Okay, like microphone drop right now, don't drop the mic, please canace. But no, I think that's a really solid theory. I think that really explains it all pretty well. Yeah, I think so too. Yeah, I'm with you. Look at that

wrap up, Steve, not convinced. I'm still not convinced. Why not, West, what's not convincing you? Because if if it's a simple typo of the three should have been an eight, Yeah, that's a big typo. Oh. No, they're not like number like English numbers. They're yeah, not Arabic numerals. There their room numbers, so they're actually ruins. There's no like Arabic numerals on there. Uh. And as it turns out, I

can show you a picture if you would like. But three and eight they're like almost exactly like it's like the it's it looks kind of like seriously, yeah, it looks kind of like the P right. But so the three the protrusion, I guess it looks like yeah, the flag is half mass yeah, and the on the the eight it's full mast. Yeah, it's like they've moved it. It's like they just moved it down about ten percent of the distance. You know, it's like our of the distance,

it's not even half very small. Okay, yeah, I'm I'm done. Microphone drop boom. So yeah, I think we solve this one. Yeah, would yeah, we agree, we're in total agreement. Wow. Well I'm actually just hot and tired. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you can find some of our links on our website Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. You can leave us a comment there if he would like. Um, I'm don't feel like I need to tell you where to find this episode,

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