The Kensington Rune Stone: Compelling New Evidence

Ever since 1898, when Olof Ohman, a Swedish immigrant working his fields in what is now Douglas County, MN, found the 202-lb., mysteriously engraved stone tangled in the roots of an uprooted tree, controversy has raged over the artifact’s authenticity. The stone, dated 1362, soon proved how difficult the search for the truth can be—and raised eyebrows over the possibility that North European explorers predated Columbus in America.

Authors: Richard Nielsen and Scott F. Wolter

Soft Cover Book:
Hard Cover Book:

		Using exhaustive research, objective analysis and personal testimony, Nielsen, Wolter, and their team have left scientific prejudice behind and refused to leave one document or stone left unturned. The book unearths never-before-seen clues that offer a gripping account of the Rune Stone’s authenticity, such as:
	•	Fascinating geological evidence, previously ignored but unmistakable, and now a powerful dating testimony
	•	An astounding connection to previously undeciphered runes, found in the graveyards of Sweden
	•	A treasure trove of unknown letters from the Ohman family themselves—as well as private interviews that break a decades-long silence on critical events
	•	The Larsson Family Papers, which helped shed light on the mysterious identity of the stone’s carvers
	•	The Cistercian Templars, and the intriguing role they may have in the discovery
	•	The final decoding of the curious, but deliberate, anomalies in several significant runes

Scott Wolter Dick Nielsen		The Kensington Rune Stone has been the subject of passionate debate over its authenticity since it was discovered in the roots of a tree near Kensington, Minnesota,by Olof Ohman in 1898. Through the presentation of compelling new evidence this book answers the many nagging questions that have eluded investigators for over 100 years. Much of this new evidence is truly startling and has led to the understanding of not only who carved the stone, but where they came from and why the came to North America. Co-authors geologist Scott Wolter and engineer Richard Nielsen present the evidence of their collective 25 years of research on the artifact. The results of their research present a compelling and convincing case. The Kensington Rune Stone: Compelling New Evidence is both a forensic inquisition and engaging mystery. As an easy-to-follow reference source, it’s the must-have guide for making an informed decision about the evidence surrounding one of the most famous inscriptions in North America. As the scientific community’s own Da Vinci Code, this book is poised to expose the clash of scientific ideology, politics and academia—while distilling the truth into one clear, but spellbinding, tome.

		Table of Contents: Introduction Discovery of the Kensington Rune Stone Geology of the Kensington Rune Stone Language and Runes of the Kensington Rune Stone The History of Gotland and the Templars Stumbles in Scholarship Willie Sarsland Gran Tapes Ohman Letters Ohman Documents Conclusion Who Owns the Kensington Rune Stone? My Experience with the Kensington Rune Stone Timeline Biographies References

Foreword

Alice Beck Kehoe

Richard Nielsen and Scott Wolter are hard scientists. They understand the methodology of science, and Inference, from data, to the Best Explanation -- IBE, philosophers of science call it. Both scientists are experienced serving as expert witnesses in court cases. Nielsen, with his doctorate in materials science, realized that the question of the Kensington Runestone's authenticity likely could be answered with petrographic data. He engaged Wolter to examine the Runestone using current high-tech microscopy. The result was clear: the rune incisions are too weathered to have been carved as recently as the nineteenth century. QED, inference from the petrographic data leads to the carved date of A.D. 1362 as the best explanation for its origin.

Wolter presented his petrographic data to an audience of archaeologists and anthropologists at a session of the Plains/Midwest Archaeological Conference happening to meet in St. Paul soon after the petrographic tests were completed. To his surprise, the audience was cool. "We know it's a hoax," people insisted. Nielsen presented his research on Old Swedish vernaculars and rune variations at the same session, linguistic data that are much less familiar to Midwestern archaeologists than geology of weathering, but that explained why the century-old rejection by professors of languages is no longer tenable. The Runestone itself stood at the front of the meeting room, letting everyone who came up to it see, and feel, that its graywacke is a very hard stone, not a slab a hoaxer would be inclined to select for a remarkably long inscription.

I met Nielsen in the 1980's at a conference on pre-Columbian transoceanic contacts, receiving from time to time his ongoing discoveries of variant runes in medieval Scandinavian manuscripts. Barry Hanson, a chemical engineer, independently figured out, about 1990, that the Runestone ought to be examined by a contemporary petrographer. He found Nielsen on the Internet and the two agreed to work together to obtain the obvious tests. Nielsen asked me to advise as an archaeologist, which led to my putting him, Hanson, and Wolter on the Plains/Midwest Conference program. I contacted two of my colleagues, senior Professor Guy Gibbon of the University of Minnesota and recently retired professor Dale Henning, considered the foremost authority on western Minnesota-adjacent regions prehistory. Gibbon and Henning heard the presentations and agreed that inference to the best explanation supported authenticity of the 1362 date of carving.

It happens that both Gibbon and I have studied history and philosophy of science in order to better understand our field of American archaeology. We encountered a number of cases where an eminent authority figure's opinion closed off research, or a fashionable approach eclipsed empirical data. Initial lack of appreciation of the significance of Wolter's work did not surprise us, given textbooks' frequent mention of the Kensington Runestone as a classic hoax. Wolter and Nielsen proposed a day-long workshop presentation of their petrographic and linguistic data, along with discussion of historical circumstances of 1362 and 1898, the time the Runestone was discovered. Professor Gibbon was pleased to chair the workshop, at Fort Snelling in St. Paul, April 2003, and to explain to the audience how the weight of probability now lies on the side of authenticity (and had since the late 1960's when L'Anse aux Meadows excavations proved that the Norse had built a colony on Canadian soil.) Still the representatives from the Smithsonian and Minnesota Historical Society could not give up their dogmatic insistence that 1898 linguists' opinion has to trump the hard data of geology and more than a century of advances in knowledge of Scandinavian languages, manuscripts, and North Atlantic settlements and trade.

Richard Nielsen had engaged Scott Wolter for the laboratory analysis of the Runestone carvings because Wolter enjoys a national reputation for expertise in petrographic analysis. The geologist, although a native Minnesotan, knew nothing about the Kensington discovery. When he went to the Minnesota Historical Society archives to look at his predecessor geologist's report, that of Newton Winchell. Wolter of course knew of Winchell, his name graces the University of Minnesota's Geology Building. Reading Winchell's field notes and report, carried out ten years after the initial discovery, Wolter was deeply impressed by the pioneer researcher's thorough, well-considered fieldwork and conclusion that Inference to the Best Explanation supported authenticity for the inscription -- basically, the same weathering data Wolter confirmed at stronger magnification. Disrespect for Wolter's presentation puzzled the forensic petrographer, but disrespect for the scientist who had fathered Minnesota geology appalled him! Now Wolter systematically searched the Archives for clues to the rejection; what he has found is, as he says, "a scandal of scholarship," dismissal of leading geologists' evaluations, failure to publish or follow up letters validating the early settlers' accounts of the find, refusal to consider later judgments by the leading Danish archaeologist, Brøndsted, and by the distinguished American linguist Robert Hall.

What has been popularly held up as a classic hoax is now a classic example of dogmatic insistence on a hasty, inadequately-informed verdict. From a larger perspective, facile rejection of the Kensington Runestone inscription indicates the power of the Columbus myth, that the Americas had been hidden from the active world until the Admiral of the Ocean Sea rent the veil. Five centuries denigrating civilizations of America's First Nations have been also five centuries pooh-poohing Norse history. Newton Winchell was not the only solid scientist whose conclusions have been ignored; the great early-nineteenth-century naturalist Alexander von Humboldt published comparisons of American and Old World cultures to argue the probability of transoceanic contacts before Columbus, and so did, in the twentieth century, the remarkable Cambridge biochemist and historian of Chinese science, Joseph Needham. Columbus and his Spanish backers were entrepreneurs who broke, not a veil hiding America, but international law recognizing entitlement from first discovery -- first discoveries indubitably made thousands of years ago by ancestors of the hundreds of millions owning America in 1492. European invasions intent on conquest and dispossession have been "legitimated" by convoluted rhetoric claiming virgin wilderness, brute savages, and God's will. Not even a small expedition of Norsemen seeking sources for furs west of the familiar Canadian Atlantic regions could be admitted to the virgin land.

Richard Nielsen and Scott Wolter give us a full account of the finding of that Norse expedition's memorial to their fallen comrades, clear presentation of the geological and linguistic data validating a pre-colonial dating, and, at last, publication of the ignored materials in the Minnesota archives. The offer, too, a few intriguing aspects of the inscription hinting of the text writer's education by clerics and perhaps association with medieval military organizations. You readers may accept these more extensive possibilities. You must respect the petrographic and linguistic data and Wolter's and Nielsen's inferences to the best explanation. Accept, too, that sorely beleaguered farmer Olof Ohman was an honest man. The notion that the Kensington Runestone is a late-nineteenth-century hoax is not supported by contemporary data.

Milwaukee Wisconsin

September 2005

News from Scott Wolter

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Coming Soon!

The follow-up to The Kensington Rune Stone: Compelling New Evidence, is an exciting non-fiction journey of discovery entitled, The Hooked X: Key to the Secret History of North America.

In September 1898, Olof Ohman was clearing his fields for farming in southwestern Minnesota. As he and his two oldest sons were clearing away trees, they uprooted what's now known as the Kensington Rune Stone. The inscription on the stone indicates it was carved and immediately buried as both a memorial and a land claim in 1362 A.D. by explorers, 130 years before Christopher Columbus.

Geologist Scott Wolter performed a forensic analysis of weathering minerals in the stone by comparison with tombstones to determine the relative age of the inscription. Once the topic of much debate over its authenticity, the stone has now been proven by Wolter to be genuine through this geologic study. Since the language, runes, grammar and dialect used on the stone must also date back to 1362 A.D., Wolter set out to find that evidence as well. Study of the runes on the Kensington stone led him to Scotland, England, Sweden and Denmark where he found the same runes, language and symbolism in use by the Cistercians, a religious order of monks that began at the turn of the 10th century and gained momentum 200 years later. Although persecuted and put to death in Europe, the Cistercian established military order, the Knights Templar, continued on secretly. Voluminous evidence suggests they traveled to North America claiming land for what they called, The New Jerusalem.

The Kensington Rune Stone is just the beginning of an alternative history of the United States, the beginning of Scott Wolter's journey to uncover the untold history of North America. Other stones found on the East Coast and inscribed with maps, dates, codes and symbolism give credence to the theory that North America was staked out long before Christopher Columbus ever set sail. That theory is bolstered by an elaborate mapping system for which the point of origin is a mysterious medieval stone tower in Newport, Rhode Island. That tower points directly to Kensington, and serves as a compass for the design of the New World.

In today's society, Freemasons are those who carry on many of the ideals of Cistercian and Templar thought. But Freemasonry is nothing new. In fact, evidence shows many of the signers of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were Freemasons, including George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and John Hancock. The separation of church and state is by their design. It comes as no surprise when considering Freemasonry is founded on the same ideals of the Cistercians, and those ideals led medieval followers to bloodshed at the hands of the Roman Catholic Church.

At the center of this bold retelling of American history lies the Hooked X, a single rune dating back to medieval times that not only dates the artifacts found in North America, but also connects them to Cistercian/Templar ideologies that were central to the creation of a new society. While Wolter's and other's research shows he may not have been our country's first explorer, Columbus' signature indicates he was likely following the ideological and literal path his brethren laid before him.

The X represents equality -- the balance of man and woman, and of heaven and earth. The hook in the X is symbolic of a child, or offspring, and represents the continuation of Cistercian/Templar and Freemasonic? principles through thought and common bloodlines, as many followers believe Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a child. Belief in what the Hooked X represents continues today for more than 5 million Freemasons worldwide and perhaps for you upon reading The Hooked X: Key to the Secret History of North America.