Gavin Callaghan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> calonlan Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > There have been a number of opinions about the
> > Heavener Runestone, its presence as
> acknowledged
> > by the Indians,
>
> I found a rather interesting rock with
> inscriptions on it in my hometown, in a cemetery
> in Flemingville, NY. I wrote an article about it
> for FATE magazine, Feb. 2007:
>
> [www.fatemag.com]
> 2.html
>
> The inscription confused me, because it seemed to
> use Latin letters, but the words were
> incomprehensible: "BoB Y DiDf". I padded out the
> article with some additional info. on the plates
> supposedly found by J. Smith in nearby Palmyra.
> After the article was printed, I received two
> letters from a FATE reader, who pointed out to me
> that the language on the Flemingville stone was
> Welsh! So isn't that interesting, a Welsh
> presence in America -post-dating the Roman
> occupation of Wales, apparently, since it's not
> runes or ogham.


Hey Gavin - my pen name (as here) is Welsh - means "A clean heart" -- also my favorite Welsh Hymn, sung during the wedding scene in "How Green Was My Valley" (Roddy Macdowell, Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara) - wonderful stuff -
Maybe some Druid priests from Wales and Ireland came along to keep the Norse from cutting down all the sacred trees and making longboats out of them? LOL

Komponisto Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The Kensington runestone
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensington_runestone
> ), found in Minnesota, USA is interesting since it
> uses umlaut (dots over vowels), something we
> Swedes didn't even know of before 1700. I tell you
> one thing more; it wasn't even invented before
> that. Then, also, it is written in modern Swedish,
> with an futhark that existed still in use in
> Sweden around 1900. The stone was found by an
> immigrant from... ...Sweden! Strange, huh?

Frank Joseph recently had a cover story about the Kensington Runestone in the Jan. 2006 issue of FATE magazine, in which he argues that the runestone is authentic.

[www.fatemag.com]

His argument is apparently based on a new book by Richard Nielsen and Scott Wolter, The Kensington Runestone: Compelling New Evidence (www.kensingtonrunestone.com). Joseph writes:

“Opponents of the Kensington Runestone’s 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, if then. The English ‘from’ for example, appears in the Kensington text, but was allegedly unknown to the 14th-century Scandinavians. [Richard] Nielsen, however, found contemporary Swedish manuscripts which do indeed use ‘from.’ The letter ‘j’,’ too, supposedly never appeared as a rune, but Nielsen produced several 14th-century examples.

“Conventional scholars further 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 represent umlauts, however, but were part of a grammatical convention in use throughout the 1300’s.

“Perhaps the most persuasive of Dr. Nielsen’s discoveries was the identification of an ‘e’-dialect evidenced by the Kensington Runestone inscription. Olof Ohman, the alleged faker, spoke an ‘a’-dialect used in his native Roslander; 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 is spoken.

“No less than 11 medieval rune-forms on the Kensington stone were unknown to scholars in Ohman’s day, but have since proven authentic. It additionally features manuscript abbreviations of the High Middle ages unknown to Scandinavian experts in 1898.

“Smithsonian Institution scholars examined 24 rune-forms on the Kensington stone they had never seen before and consequently condemned it as a fraud. Yet, Nielsen points out, all these formerly unknown rune-forms have since been found to have been in use on the island of Gotland during medieval times. Similarly, about a dozen words judged ‘impossible for the 14th century’ were located by Nielsen and his colleagues in surviving records of medieval Dalsland, Bohuslan, and Vastergothland, all in the same area of western Sweden.” (pp. 14-5)

In the same FATE magazine article, Frank Joseph also describes the rather rough, embittering treatment which immigrant farmer Ohman endured after unearthing the stone:

“Immediately after its discovery, the Kensington Runestone was almost unanimously dismissed by professional archaeologists as a deliberate hoax, even though most had never personally examined the object of their condemnation. Despite Olof Ohman’s lifelong insistence that he found the artifact as described, he was repeatedly accused of having faked it. Because he happened to be a Swedish immigrant himself, he was pilloried as a forger who wanted to twist history for his own ethnic advantage. From the day he unearthed the inscribed boulder, Olof was a bitter man.

“Disgusted with the treatment he received for telling the truth, he consigned the runestone to his granary. His son suggested that it would make a good doorstop, but it was never so used, despite later reports that originated from his remark. In 1907, Olof gave the artifact to a young scholar, Hjalmar R. Holand. Ohman made no money in the transaction. In fact, he had never tried to profit from his discovery- strange behavior for a man supposedly guilty of fabricating a hoax. For the next several decades, Holand promoted its authenticity in numerous lectures and published books.” (p. 12)

Admittedly, sometimes Frank Joseph seems rather credulous; vide his pro-Atlantis views, and the pro-occult stance in his various books, etc. But such things are in no way contrary to a truly scientific stance; in fact, an open mind would seem to be a prerequisite for any true science. But not being a runes-scholar myself I'm not qualified to judge whether Joseph's assertions in this article are accurate.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 20 Jan 09 | 05:35PM by Gavin Callaghan.

If the assertions are properly footnoted and referenced in a manner which other scholars can follow up on and validate, then it's OK - I would very much like to see the documentation - I have not studied the Kensington, but I am aware that the the old man maintained that it is as he found it, and that's all he really knew about it to the end of his days. It is very common for "professional" archaeologists who have never examined an object, to refute its veracity because it fails to fit the parameters of present opinion. Knocking accepted ideas into a cocked-hat is one of them most delightful of pastimes - although it is dangerous (as per Galileo, et al).
The recent case of the "James Ossuary" is the most sophisticated forgery ever done in the field of archaeology - and, indeed, every one was prepared to defend its authenticity until forensics at the level of the microscopic revealed the forgery. But it was incredibly well done - the knowledge of how to date an inscription using modern scientific tools was not around at the time the Kensington was unearthed, nor is it likely that this Farmer would have had the technical knowledge to beat the science - the forger of the James had covered all the chemical bases but one, and that most extremely obscure, yet he was found out at last - why, because the value is so great financially - he was in the artifact business. The poor old Swede
was 180 degrees away from the professional fraud.