On Friday, Jan 26, I went to Alexandria where and epigrapher (one who inscribes stones for a living), Janey Westin, performed an examination of the Kensington Runestone. At 2pm, she gave a brief talk on what she had found, and Barry Hanson gave an update on some other studies of the runestone going on. Here is a summary of what was discussed:
- The inscribed face of the stone appears to have been split off from a larger boulder. This was the first action taken on the stone by whoever carved the inscription.
- The stone was then layed face down, and the inscribed side split off from
the boulder.
[note: afterward, someone brought in a similar stone about a foot in
diameter - it took Janey four strong taps to split the stone and provide a
fairly even face on the stone. This same action caused a side of the stone
to split off fairly neatly as well]
- the edge of the stone between these faces was then dressed and properly squared off - this allowed for runes to be carved right up to the edge of the stone without fracturing the edge.
- whoever dressed the stone was very familiar with working with stone, however;
- whover carved the runes was entirely unfamiliar with cutting inscriptions
--- the straight lines were cut with simple straight pounding, holding the
chisel vertically against the stone and banging down. This should have been
done by holding the chisel at an angle and chipping in that way.
--- similarly, and more obviously, the curved lines were very badly formed.
[note: several comments have been made in the literature surrounding the KRS
regarding how well the stone was cut - a professional job - this appears to
be totally incorrect]
- In earlier literature on the stone it was believed that the stone was carved with right and left hand strokes (possibly right and left handed people). Janey could find no evidence for this statement, and thought it was incorrect.
- If the stone were from the bottom of the hill, it would probably have been dressed there then brought to the top for inscribing.
- There were 4 sizes of chisels involved in crafting the stone, a 1 inch, a
1/2 inch, a 3/8 inch, and a point chisel
- the point chisel did not have a strictly round point. When reforging such
a chisel, it cannot be tapped perfectly round, but rather squared off at the
tip.
- The chisels would have had to have been reforged during the cutting to
remain sharp [Janey noted that the chisels were kept very sharp]. This
suggests that a fire was kept handy and someone worked on reforging the
tools during the work.
- The 2nd line of the inscription has a word chipped off at the beginning of
the line. The stone split and flaked off at this point.
- The 3rd line also has an area flaked off, but it is uncertain whether
there was a word there or not.
- Some runes were noticed to have been recarved. This is particularly true
of the 'OK' in line 6, which was inscribed along a fracture line in the
stone. A small circular area was chipped off here and the runes recut at
the same point. This circular chipping may hold a key to investigating the
weathering of the stone.
- A practice stroke was noted near the bottom (lower right) of the stone.
This practice stroke has been previously unknown and is untouched (unlike
other areas of the stone where the inscription was scraped and washed).
This will be important in helping to date the inscription.
- The lines were well laid out, and must have been been laid out in advance
of the inscription.
- The person who carved the stone must have been a literate person, the
spacing of the runes, and the justification of the lines to the edges of the
stone confirms that.
- I asked Janey if she thought that the inscriber specifically would have
had to have had experience/been literate in writing rune, she was not sure,
but felt it was most likely that he did.
- The inscription seems to have been done by one person, and took about one
day to carve
- Janey feels that it was no doubt carved in 1362.
- Barry Hanson updated the physical research going on with the stone, and
reiterated that the results currently in suggest at least 50-200 years of
weathering, and possibly more.
- some of the tests he has suggested include: mica degradation processes,
mineral formation on made made featuers (coatings and alterations) using
scanning electron microscopy, differential weathering of calcite/greywacke,
incipient weathering with 3-D laser imaging (at Stanford), differential
mineral absorption as a result of standing upright in th ground, a root
stain on the back side of the KRS, detailed analysis of the effect of the
iron tools used to carve the stone, origin of the Greenbelt graywacke stone,
and more.
- He also noted some of the finding made recently by Richard Nielsen
regarding the linguistics:
--- [I am unsure how difficult this process would have been, possibly just
heating the metal and giving it a few taps to reset the point - does anyone
have a blacksmith contact out there????]
--- the odd /W/ runeform (a trident with a dot in the left 'fork') has been
found on a midieval curch wall that had been buried and rediscovered in
1910.
--- the word hawet which usually means a sea or ocean, can be used to refer
to a large inland lake (such as L Winnipeg, or L superior).
--- the thorn rune (looks like a D with a longer stem) usually is used for
the /th/ sound, but has been found used at the end of the suffix /land/ - it
has a similar use on the KRS in Vinland.