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ANCIENT MYSTERIES
The The Kensington Kensington Rune Rune Stone Stone
Is Is Not Not the the Only Only Evidence Evidence for for
a a Prehistoric Prehistoric Viking Viking Presence
Presence
• BY FRANK JOSEPH
Atlantis Rising readers
are familiar with the
Kensington Rune
Stone, as cited in last
year’s November/December issue
(Number 54). The 202–pound
granite slab covered with a Norse
inscription was excavated 120
miles northwest of Minneapolis,
114 years ago by an immigrant
farmer clearing his field.
The text reads, “We eight Goetlanders (medieval
Swedes) and twenty-two Northmen are on
this acquisition expedition far west from Vinland
(Maine, according to the authenticated fifteenth
century Vinland Map; see Atlantis Rising,
number 78). 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 ten men by the
sea (Lake Superior) to look after our ships, fourteen
days’ travel from this place. Year of the
Lord 1362.”
From the late nineteenth century,
throughout the twentieth and into the twenty
first, the Kensington Rune Stone was hotly debated
between advocates (primarily amateur) of
its pre-Columbian authenticity, and self-styled
debunkers (mostly mainstream), convinced it
40 ATLANTIS ATLANTIS RISING RISING • Number 95
was a hoax. Not until
the object was subjected
to professional
testing by state-of-theart
research was its actual
provenance revealed.
Nine years
ago, university-trained
geologist, Scott
Wolter, President of
American Petrographic
Services, an
award-winning geological
laboratory in St. Paul, Minnesota, showed
that mineralization, weathering patterns, and
deposition within the engraved runes themselves
combined to prove that the boulder had
been buried for more than two centuries, an
observation consistent with its mid-fourteenth
century date.
“The facts are clear, concise, and consistent,”
he states. “The tombstone weathering
study I performed in my material forensic laboratory
during 2003 clearly showed the inscription
to be older than two hundred years
from the date it was pulled from the ground in
1898.”
Although his lab results were confirmed by
a virtually unanimous consensus of his geology
colleagues, Wolter’s findings were ignored by
archaeologists, who continue to insist that the
Minnesota object is a fake. They likewise pre-
Kensington Rune Stone
ferred to ignore his discovery of a hooked X
and dotted R on the artifact. Both glyphs, unknown
to professional runeologists until decades
after it was unearthed 114 years ago, were
in use only from AD 1000 to 1450, reflecting
the 1362 date on the Kensington Rune Stone.
Wolter thereby proved that it was originally
carved by Scandinavian visitors in the Upper
Midwest 130 years before Christopher Columbus
landed on the beach at San Salvador, or
300 years before the first modern European,
Claude Allouez, a Christian missionary, arrived
in Minnesota.
While the Kensington Rune Stone has been
made famous by Wolter’s book, The Hooked X,
and his numerous, nationally televised appearances
on The History Channel, it is by no means
the only Norse artifact of pre-Columbian origins
discovered in the Gopher State (MN: North
Star Press of St. Cloud, 2009). Far less well known
is its missing companion piece, which could
complete the now-verified tale of exploration
and massacre. The sunken runic inscription was
found (appropriately enough) at a place called
Norway Lake, located less than 90 miles northwest
of Minneapolis, approximately three miles
west of the Shakopee River, about five miles
east from the town of Sunburg, and some 75
miles southeast from Kensington.
The Upper Midwest was suffering a severe
drought that lowered water levels across Minne-
Continued on Page 68
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