I attended the Joint Midwest Archaeological/Plains Anthropological
Conferenece held in St Paul, MN from Nov 9-12, 2000. On Friday at 3:20pm there was a symposium titled The Kensington Runestone Reexamined. While the symposium was only scheduled to rune for an hour and twenty minutes, but due to some very recent information, it actually ran an hour longer than that.
The following contains abstracts from the symposium and recollections of what occured supported by notes I took. While I cannot guarantee absolute accuracy, this should be very close to what was presented. Side notes by myselef will be in brackets []
3:20 Alice Kehoe and Barry Hanson
History of the Kensington Runestone: Hoaxers and Pendants
"
Published literature on the Kensington Runestone reveals a lineage of citations to select 'authorities' prnouncing the Runestone a hoax, with surprising little reference to scholars who considered the possibility the runestone is genuine. Archival material from geologists examining the Runestone and from local residents, and older contemporary arguments on the authenticity of rune versions dispute the facile claim of hoax. This paper lists irrelevant issues as well as substantive material pertinent to the question of inscription's age, context, and Norse entradas into continental America."
Kehoe began the symposium with a brief history of the Runestone. She noted that with the discovery of the L'Anse Aux Meadows site in Newfoundland (the presence of the Norse in American then being proved), the probability that the Kensington Runestone is authentic has increased. She also noted that all books critical of the KRS where published prior to the L'Anse discovery.
Little original material critical of the stone has been published since that time, with negative statements being repeated, and positive statements ignored.
Kehoe also delved into some of the history of 14th century Scandinavia, noting in particular the economic stresses being put on the regions by the closure of direct trade with Byzantium (Novgorod treaty of 1323), and the domination of trade in the Baltic by the Hanseatic league. There would have been a need to look for new trade routes in order to overcome an economic crisis in Scandinavia. [I also note that Sweden in this period was expansionistic, having bought Skane from Denmark, and engaged in a crusade against Russia]
She also related from personal experience a story (not related to the KRS) where new critical thinking had been ignored, critics simply reemphisising old statements. In this instance the experts quoted each other or a previous expert, resulting in a line of non-critical thinking, and no reexamination of the point in question. When the original source was examined, it was found that in later discussion opposition had been raised to the point, and the point concieded. However, as with the KRS, critics merely copied each other rather than examining the source material.
3:40 Barry Hanson
Some Physical Features of the Kensington Runestone
"Eleven specific recommendations are msde for study of the physical features of the Kensington Runestone. Weathering of the greywacke within and on the edges of the runes will be particularly observed. The author examined the Runestone under 126x zoom magnification to develop testing protocols, and has arrainged for geologists, a geochemist, and labrotory tests, scheduled for November."
The first part of Hanson's talk was a continuation of Kehoe. He noted that of the 32 linguistic experts who commented on the KRS [A look at the list indicates he is talking of those critical of the runestone - missing are those who believed the stone authentic such as Fossum, Hagen, Thalbitzer, and Hall] only 6 saw the stone, and only 8 actually published.
In handouts relating to this, Hanson lists the various experts, those who published, and what the arguments were. I hope at some further point to scan these documents up, as they are quite interesting and useful to the researcher, but which are too long to go into here. Hanson noted that in his opinioin that many of the arguments against he stone resulted from a "failure of scientific method and peer review"
Hanson also notes that his primary involvement is in collecting data on the physical aspects of the stone. He realizes that he is not qualified for interpetation of the data, but has set up (also listed in the handout) a suggested 11 ideas for testing the KRS. After an initial examination using a zoom microscope, he has now put the runestone in the hands of experts. Hanson then introduced Scott Walter of American Petrographic Labrotories who has been examing the stone.
Walter had never heard of the stone up until a couple of months ago [presumably not until Hanson asked him to examine the stone] and so did not have any preconcieved ideas going in. He has also been working with several other experts in his analysis of the stone, though only one of those he named, Dr Ojakangas of U of MN - Duluth, do I recall.
The stone is a glacial erratic, of the type (greenstone???) found commonly in Northern Minnesota and Southern Ontario. Its location in the Kensington area is consistant with being carried on glacial flows.
Walter names three specific surfaces in his work - the glacial backside, with numerous glacial scratches; the inscribed face; and the inscribed side of the stone which he calls the 'split side'. This last element is important as Walter notes no glaciation of that side, and indentations near the edges suggest that this surface was tooled at the time of the inscription [Winchell's "edge face... apparently dressed by a rough bush-hammering"]
Walter also notes the lower half of the face has hydrothemal calcite, about 1-2mm thick, apparently an intrusion into the stone, which later cleaved off. Also there is a cleavage plane near the top of the stone starting near at the second line, that seems to have broken off during the carving of the stone.
The inscription shows some powder within, which is evidence of retooling [such as by scraping the incision with a nail] done at some point later than the original incision. The wider area near the top of the inscribed grooves generally do not show this retooling, having not been scraped and so evidence the orginal incision. Also on the split side, the left portion of the inscription does not appear to be heavily retooled.
The stone contains about 2% iron pyrites. Those areas where the inscription has not been retooled shows heavy iron oxide. This oxidation indicates weathering of the area, but Walter has not yet stated a conclusion about the age of these oxidized areas.
The glaciated side of the stone shows an area of stain about three inches wide across the back of the stone, where there has apparently been some leeching [I did not firmly grasp what was meant here]. Walter is tenatively calling this area the "root stain" area, based on a presumption, yet unproven, that this is where the root grew across the back of the stone. A core sample of 1.25mm diameter by 2.25mm deep [I believe thise are the correct dimensions - my notes only give 1.25 x 2.25 withouth depth or scale (inches??)] was taken in this area, and the stain was about 1 mm deep. More examination needs to be done here.
Walter also noted there were three kinds of micas in the stone. He was able to take a thin slice from the bottom of the core, the glaciated backside, and from the split side belived to have been made at the same time as the inscription. These were examined under varying conditions, with special attention to degredation of the micas. The slides given during the presentation appeared to show a great deal of degredation of the micas on the split side, compared to the 'virgin' core sample.
Walter did not give an apparent age to this sample, but did note that the split side sample appears "highly weathered", and also noted that micas are considered tough to weather. He has suggested taking samples from granite gravestones (which have similar micas) from above and below ground, for use in comparison with the KRS sample in order to give some dating to the inscription.
Hanson has suggested numerous other tests of the stone and inscription. The total time in the testing may take several years.
[This was the big WOW factor of the symposium for me. If the initial appearances are born out by further testing, then I think the age of the inscription must be considerably more than 200 years. Wait and see, but things look strong for geophysical authentication of the inscription.]
4:00 Richard Nielsen
Recent Discoveries concerning the Kensington Rune Stone
"Recent discoveries support a 14th-century explanation for the Kensington Rune Stone's apparent oddities: pendatic numbers and the 1362 date, origin of the runes, and Old Swedish. Pendatic numbers can be shown to have been used in medieval dating similarly to those on the Kensington Rune Stone. The runes originated from rune-rows used on the Island of Gotland, as shown in publications between 1968-1972. The language is entirely Old Swedish, of which over a dozen words on the Kensington Rune Stone have been published in the Old Swedish Dictionary (1925-1975) only after the finding of the Rune Stone in 1898."
[Note: due to the length of the previous talk on geophysical aspects of the stone, Nielsen's talk did not start until well after 5:00pm]
Nielsen noted that much of the linguistic evidence against the runestone, and its early dismissal resulted from the lack of the extensive data base on Old Swedish that we now have. If Nielsen's analysis is correct, all the words in the inscirption have now been identified as Old Swedish, particularly from the Dalland region [an area just north of Bohuslan, which Nielsen orginally suggested as being the dialect of the inscriber].
An article to be published this Spring [Scandinavian Studies???] will go into this in considerable more depth. Nielsen has been corresponding with a respected expert from Europe regarding this article, and believes that it will be foolproof.
Nielsen's main point was that the material available to the experts circa 1900 was considerably less than today, and that this newly revealed material supports the authenticity of the rune stone.
4:20 Jon Polansky
Heuristic, Scientific Appraisals of the Suggested Importance of the Kensington Runestone
"The Kensington Runestone has been a source of controversy since its reported discovery in 1898. Within the past decade new linguistic/epigraphic evidence has challanged assertions that the inscriptions represents a 19th century forgery. However there appears to have been an attempt to dismiss the findings (with frequent arguments based on personal authority rether tahn evidence, rather than conduct heuristic scientific appraisals. Evidence of, and potential reasons for, this apparently unscientific behavior are discussed in terms of difficult issues that face both authors and recipients dealing with the new information. The controversy needs to be viewed in the larger context of existing paradigms within the academic archaelogical/linguistic communities that appear to limit the application of proper epistemological methodologies."
Okay, by now I was phsycially getting hot, and this was for the most part a summation so I didn't take notes. The main point (both for this and the symposium in general) was repeated that the criticism of the stone are based on a repetition of old arguments, rather than an assesment of the new information being generated by those who believe in authenticity.
This concluded the symposium.
Afterwords I schmoozed and was introduced to several other people interested in the runestone. Some had read my critique of the Smithsonian book (given elsewhere on this homepage) recently published in the NEARA Journal, and gave me positive feedback on it.
The proceedings were also filmed by a crew preparing a teaser (a 10 minute pitch) for the National Geographic Society, in an attempt to get them to do a show on the KRS. Professional outfit. There were both proponents and adversaries of the stone at the Conference (Brigitta Wallace was guest speaker). They did about a 10 minute interview with me, which I hope went over well. They may use a little of it, I suppose, but it is just as likely to end up on the cutting room floor. Hey, if I gets me 15 minutes-o-fame, I'll be sure and let you know.
I attended another symposium on rock art the next day (interesting) but outside the scope of this page.
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