Are American Runestones Real? Fake Viking News from the USA!
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- Опубликовано: 27 июл 2024
- If you're from Minnesota you might support the mighty Vikings in the Superbowl (for your many NFL sins), but are any of the so-called Viking Runestones of the United States actually real? What's the story behind the Kensington Runestone, arguably America's most famous Swedish medieval hoax?
Are there really medieval runes in the USA? Did Vikings and medieval explorers carve stones as they were trading and fighting with indigenous peoples in Oklahoma, Minnesota and Maine?
Watch my nonsense and find out ;)
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Oh no. As a Nordic who studied art history in the States, I ended up making a rune stone for one of my classes, and absolutely carelessly disregarded it somewhere in Northern Virginia years ago. If anyone finds it... - I take no responsibility! 😂
Yeah, I made a small-ish rune stone once. It said something witty like "Søren is cool". I believe it's somewhere in the garden of my childhood home.
I've done similar in southwest PA but usually in a wholly fictional alphabet like Elvish or Theban so as to make the joke more obvious (and funny) to those in the know. Too many people insisting Vinland was New Jersey.
@@nickaschenbecker9882 You have given me a wonderful idea.
I fully intend to find your rune stone
@@alannatherson7721 Yours will say "welcome to Vinland, New Jersey"
We NEED a fake runestone that translates to "Subscribe to The Welsh Viking". It could even be a badge or sticker for merch. I am legitimately upset that I don't have the talent to create one, or the funds to commission it! 😂
Love that
Great idea!
I'm in!
That would be really fun.
Great Idea!!
"We lost 10 men and are being pursued through this wild land by an unknown evil. Must make haste to our ships in the inland sea or surely perish. Suddenly realizing that stopping to carve this stone is only the latest in a long series of bad life decisions. We need to take a good long look at--continued on back of stone."
Rofl
Ends with "aaarrrrggh" of course.
It trails off in a scrabbled line
@@richmcgee434
"Aaarrrrggghhh"?
A bit like, "This was the last text message he ever sent me before he wandered off the cliff because he was busy staring at his phone."
As an American, this is my surprised face. Note its lack of surprise.
Jimmy: “I hate everything.”
Me: “can confirm this man is a PhD student”
My favourite modern runestone makes no effort to hide what date it's from, because it depicts a knight taking down a camera drone by hurling a spear at it.
Love that one so much!
"Stop that, Hjörleifur, the skrælings will hear us!"
"You know I always chisel when I'm nervous! How do I do a Þ again?"
SOMEONE GIVE ME SOME LIMESTONE OR IM GOING TO HAVE A PANIC ATTACK
@@j_fenrir😂
"the translator was a presenter of an american tv show-" [every scholar of ancient american cultures shrieks in fear and pain]
The way he zoomed in on the dreaded capital H (which is yellow as to warn what kind of journalism they do on the Hitler & Aliens channel) was priceless.
Sure, I grant you it's a fake runestone, but tell me you wouldn't watch a movie named, "Valley of the Gnomes!" I might just have to make it because I'm bummed it doesn't exist.
Yes!
Would that be a variation of the valley of the dolls? And add in some horses?
make it part of the Gnomeo and Juliet extended universe
There appear to be at least two places in the US called the Valley of the Gnomes, one in Utah, one in Seattle, Washington. Perhaps a location shoot is in order? :)
@@rach_lazeits the GnomCU
As an Icelandic American with sizable knowledge of runes and old norse language living in the Midwestern US:
1. I am deeply sorry for these "runestones"
2. I have a sudden urge to make a trans rights runestone in accurate 12th century Icelandic.
:D okay, you made my day. Pls do this btw haha
You would be able to make that "subscribe to the Welsh Viking" runestone that someone suggested? It would be perfect merch❤ (but no pressure ofc). Though I get that the trans rights one would be first priority.
Do it!
Do it!
Do ir
"use the right alphabet is forgery 101"
sounds like it's learned by experience
was teenage jimmy trying to make a fake id and like 'oh no! i've written it in linear a' :S
I mean there has been documents that has been proven forgeries as they used fonts in Microsoft Word, that wasn't invented at the time the document was supposed to have been written.
Jimmy has given us a mission…. We must not disappoint
A runestone thar has modern lyrics on it with interlacing that's imaging Prince's guitar and a drumkit! Make learning runes fun! *grin*
There's a artist on yt over on frog leap studios he does metal covers of all kinds of music. He's from Norway, I wonder if he would know how to do this. I bet he would. His name's Leo.
@@margaretkaraba8161 "Anyway, here's Wonderwall..."
@@margaretkaraba8161 Never gonna give you up?
Build me a runestone worthy of Isengard!
I love the idea of Jimmy teaching us Historical Forgery 101: How to not look like a right noob with your fake artifacts :D
That seems to be the main takeaway from a lot of archaeology debunking videos, lol.
Love how this pretty much turned into "the Do's and Don'ts of runestone forgery"😂
And thanks again for taking this time when you are so busy with all your other stuff. You're always one of the highlights of my week. (I wish I had money so I could become a patreon or something)
A kind word and knowing that my videos are enjoyable for you is 100% more than enough, so thank you! :)
I want to make one with an accurate date. Something like, "this stone was carved in 2022 common era and if you thought it was an authentic medieval carving in Kansas then you've been fooled."
Lmao! Go for it! That sounds awesome
I found it hilarious, a guy "on the run from natives", producing a hammer and a chisel and bashing into a rock while hiding.... really? I love this channel and thanks for tackling this.
This reminded me of this bit from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"
There! Look!
What does it say? What language is that?
Brother Maynard, you're our scholar.
It is Aramaic!
Of course. Joseph of Arimathea!
-Of course.
-What does it say?
It reads, "Here may be found...
"...the last words of Joseph of Arimathea:
"'He who is valiant and pure of spirit...
"'...may find the Holy Grail...
"'...in the Castle of Aaargh."'
What?
"The Castle of Aaargh."
What is that?
He must have died while carving it.
-Come on!
-That's what it says.
Look, if he was dying,
he wouldn't bother to carve "Aaargh."
-He'd just say it.
-That's what's carved in the rock.
-Perhaps he was dictating it.
-Shut up!
-Does it say anything else?
-No!
Just "Aaargh."
They apparently have a carved stone from that lost colony in Virginia, carved by a woman after she survived a massacre and while in hiding she carved, badly, this whole perfectly grammatically correct long paragraph. All to say what I just wrote with of course no real details or directions. Sure...
@@lenabreijer1311 I'm just saying, the translation may not be directly " in hiding" or " running" they could be being harassed and slowly killed off and they know they won't win so they keep moving camp trying to make their way out
@@jhtsurvival lol people who are slowly harassed and moving around are not hauling a big rock just in case they lose. People who are treated that way just keep hoping and moving even if they have to do it on a leaky boat across the Mediterranean. They don't haul a rock around to keep a diary of their problems. Also chissling a rock makes lots of odd noise. Your hunter is not going to go "oh listen there goes that woodpecker hitting rocks again, what a stupid bird!"
Thank you for keeping in your technical goofs. It goes to show the process and for those of us who have the patience bonus laughs.
The goofs are very endearing, I really enjoy them.
"Put a dragon on it" is always good advice.
Anyway I hadn't heard of any of these and it's wild
The fighting Swedes with the horns scratched off was just the topper to this video. Lol!! Thanks Jimmy!
If it rests your mind at all, speaking as a Minnesotan, almost everyone knows the Kensington runestone is a fake. However, it's housed in a small town with absolutely no other claim to fame, so they continue wasting tax dollars making it part of a low-rent roadside attraction. The small minority who still insist it's real tend to be of the... ehem... Folkish variety.
Folkish or Völkisch?
@@johannageisel5390 it kind of means the same thing on this side. Guys with shaven heads and old tattoos from 75 years ago.
@@lenabreijer1311 Ah, ok. I think I mixed it up with "folksy", which is different.
I didn't quite know what "folkish" meant.
@@johannageisel5390 Yeah, same thing in this context. Folkish is used a lot these days due to the Asatru Folk Assembly, which is really just a modern day Volkisch group. They're referred to as either Folkish or neo-Volkisch. 🙂
Would a small American town with little economic activity be tempted to develop a myth into a “legend” in order to tap into the Tourism Industry? I’m sure it’s been done quite a few times.
This video awakened the memory that I'd just forgotten of itty bitty Faye obsessed with dragons using the runes I'd learned from the dragonology book to "translate" the fake Oklahoma runestone. I'm not surprised it's fake nowadays, but it is a really cute story at least
edit: okay, I grew up not far from the Mustang mountains, and how have I NOT heard about the Mustang runestone??? I was definitely still in the depths of weird dragon history kid when it was found.
Hahahaha I had the same book XD
@@bonelace111 that book is a rite of passage for every weird dragon kid
Fake news from the USA, no really, I'm deeply adn throughly shocked./s In all seriousness I'm really happy that you are tackling what are essentially historical conspiracy theories and more importantly HOW you do so - with the tact and subtlety that history necessitates to prevent rampant ideologised dogmatism. I say this mostly as a reaction to your whole catalogue of videos, not just this one in particular, though yes including this.
*hugs from Texas* I love seeing pseudo archeology taken down while I work on my RenFest Captain America Costume!
RenFest Cap? That sounds pretty cool!
Ooooh nice! Did you think about 1616 cap as well?
@@mzgreenjeansapproves honestly it’s kinda of a mishmash of what I can find/make as I can afford to. The crown jewel is my 75th anniversary replica shield which I wear on a custom harness. I’m working on duding up some shoulder gambison that I ordered the wrong color on the cheap
@@JasTheMadTexan that sounds lovely! I adore creativity!
The Welsh Viking, defending truth, justice, and archeology! Immigrant Scandinavian/hippie grafitti.
I’m from Minnesota, and figured it was fake. I just wished it wasn’t. Incidentally, the Triceratops in our Science Museum is named Fafnir.
I'm a Minnesotan of (mostly) Scandinavian decent. The Kensington stone was revealed as a fake many years ago. I'm not sad about that. Thanks for the enlightening video.
As a Minnesotan I wish the runestones and tales of Vikings coming to Minnesota where true but I gotta come to terms with reality that they aren’t and the other Minnesota Vikings won’t win the super bowl
I recently took a road trip to all the Menards in west central Minnesota - the shiplap we were using in our attic was discontinued mid-project - and Alexandria MN was one of the stops. While I was there I thought I’d check out the Kennington Runestone museum. It was a truly charming museum with a one room school house out back and a 4-H museum in the barn along side a replica Viking ship. Everything you could want from a small town museum. I was however very skeptical of the runestone itself. Nice to hear the real history.
There's a lovely modern runestone in a park in the middle of Tokyo that I think was given to the city in honor of a joint Japanese/Swedish expedition to the antarctic. It took me by surprise and I had to get pictures of it. Definitely the oddest thing I saw while I was there.
I actually knew a professor who did stuff involving old Norse and German… I remember reading some of his articles, and one of them was on the “Kansas City rune stone” and basically long story short his article was like: Yeah, this is from the 19th century…. Because it had a date that literally said 1840 or something along those lines.
way ahead of you. my local SCA group has a runestone in the cellar and it looks pretty nice (I doubt we'll ever move it out to a hill somewhere, the thing is Heavy even as small as it is)
"Do it, DO IT! and if it nets you money, give me a cut" GO, JIMMY, GO!
Here's hoping life gets easier for you and yours, soonest.
Viking reenacted at Heavener two weeks ago :) Lovely mountain and park. Nice place to camp and play. Don't deny the validity of the stone within hearing of any of the locals!
Well now I really want to fake a runestone in my yard and kickstart the academic recognition of Viking-Taíno relations. "I am Snorri and I am carving this runestone under a palm tree while my wife Anacaona weaves next to me."
As someone from Minnesota I was wondering when the Kensington Runestone would come up. (I didn't read the video description until after I'd watched the video.) My mother even brought me when I was younger to see the runestone on a trip. It was a very small museum filled with real artifacts surrounding the runestone (because it's obviously real 😉). I will not support the Vikings NFL team because the logo has a horned helmet. (In all seriousness, my dad is an avid supporter of the vikings and I just don't understand the appeal of any version of sportball.) Thanks for the video. It was fun to watch.
Brilliant intro again. Love my history, even fake history, with a bit of a laugh. Here, in Detroit, Michigan, there have always been stories of Vikings on the Great Lakes. Along with an actual settlement, that unfortunately (surprise surprise) disappeared under the water, never to be seen again. Very convenient! 😆 We do have some nice, and real, petroglyphs made by indiginous people, though. Definitely worth seeing. Thanks for the vid!
Also live in Michigan lol
Also live in Michigan, those petroglyphs are cool as hell
@@eazy8579 They really are cool!
@@whoahanant Greetings fellow Michigander! Small world, eh?
Lol, it's a wonder they find room, due to all the Egyptians, Minoans, and Phoenicians that some people over there believe had outposts and copper mines in the Great Lakes. 🤦😂
Snort. That Minnesota stone is a joke around here. The Minnesota Vikings are as well. Maybe they would play better if they were the Minnesota Swedes..
Yes, I am a Minnesota resident. Didn't know about the other stones. Makes me chuckle every times I see the blonde dude in the Victorian helmet.
Oh well, as my Dad says, life gets teejious, don't it.
Thank you for another lovely video. Was stoked to see you on a costume collab recently. Take care.
It's even funnier when you realize that across the pond where Jimmy lives, swedes are rutabagas.
@@sonipitts that is so awesome 👌
The “Minnesota Viking” mascot with the Horned Helmet is very un-Viking like.
That is just a bad copy of an old Costume Concept from a German Wagnerian Ring Cycle Opera in the late 1880’s and has nothing to do with Vikings.
@@Aswaguespack Exactly
@@Aswaguespack So yeah. A rutabaga in an opera costume. 🤣
I was so entranced by Editing Jimmy's comments and overlays that I had to rewatch the intro and pay attention to what Speaking Jimmy was saying.
Also, please check me on the steps to Making a good Viking runestone forgery!
Step 1: find geologically appropriate stone, pleased at how you're really gonna fool people now.
Step 2: research actual runestones (as counseled by Jimmy).
Step 3: practice the younger, more spry alphabet; graphic design; mustached Viking iconography.
Step 4: show a number of different designs to friends, swearing them to secrecy over something they probably don't get.
Step 5: toss out some designs for being too silly, others for being too academic and stodgy.
Step 5.a. research whether Scandanavians understood 'stodgy' as a concept, or find cultural equivalent.
Step 5.b: reconsider earlier designs ruled out for being too English stodgy and determine if they're actually too [Scandanavian equivalent].
Step 6: choose a final design you liked from the beginning that's a bit historical and cheeky at the same time, and consider using modern techniques to engrave.
Step 7: rule out modern techniques (even though laser etching which would be SO COOL) and learn how to chisel using age appropriate tools.
Years later...
Step 8: start chiseling forgery in stone which has by now weathered a bit since you first bought it.
Step 9: mess up, throw away, buy more stone (repeat as many times as needed)
Step 10: finish a runestone that's halfway decent, beam with reluctant pride and bruised ego at this 'not gonna do another one' final forgery.
Step 11: research a place to bury it.
Step 12: realize this stone is too damn heavy (maybe you went too far with accuracy), decide to bury it where it sits in your backyard (how did it get there in the first place, you now wonder?!)
Step 13: hide all of your tools, break up all previous bad copies with a sledgehammer, wipe your internet search history.
Step 14: call the press!
Step 15: ... profit, somehow, but as agreed, giving Jimmy a cut.
Speaking of Vikings in North America (the real ones, this time), have you seen the article from _Nature_ (dated 20 Oct., 2021) that proposes a new *specific* date for the L’Anse aux Meadows settlement site? The RUclips Channel SciShow mentioned it as the second item in their most recent "News" video, and they link to the _Nature_ article in their video description (The first item in that video is news about the genetics of the domesticated horse, so a cute picture of a foal is in the thumbnail).
The beginning of this video reminds me of my zoom class when there's always one person that forgets to unmute and the tutor keeps telling them to unmute. Also now I feel like a challenge has been issued to make a really believable fake rune stone.
Brb, gotta make a fake runestone.
There's an ancient runestone in my city of Coeur d'alene Idaho. The stone is ancient but not the writing on it. I know this because I put it there, and when translated it says,"Cameron was here".
I wonder about the gibberish rune stones in the places where Scandinavian settlers were, not that I think they would be genuine, but did the Scandinavian settlers create them for some specific purpose? Did we stumble across someone's 200 year old practical jokes? I would love to be a fly on the wall when they were being carved
I was thinking this, too. I’m envisioning either kids sneaking off with a book that had pictures of runes and making the carvings while pretending to be Vikings, or a group of men who got drunk one night and thought it’d be a fun thing to do and kept going back and adding more once they sobered up because it was winter and they were bored.
Largely it's the same reason kids in junior high insist they know witchcraft. They want to be interesting. But it might also be because they want it to seem like they have some greater claim to the land than the WASPs or the Native Americans the WASPs initially stole the land from. But that 2nd idea might be thinking too far into it. It would be nice if they WERE practical jokes or inside jokes made with no intent to deceive but people who "find" this crap are way too vehement about its pedigree.
I think it could be a great dad-hoax to mess with people
I seriously adore the amount of chaotic energy and learning this video provides. 10/10 yay debunk bad info!
Editing Jimmy is a hoot!
I was very disappointed to learn that the Mustang roonstone didn't say "Eat at Joe's".
As for the Kensington one, wasn't it a thing in the Victorian era to create fakes to try to bamboozle their friends?
Hey, Jimmy! Want a fake roonstone in the Seattle area? 😈
Editing Jimmy sure sounds an awful lot like video Jimmy… God, they can’t surely be one and the same?! 😆
As a Minnesotan I'm always glad for explanations of how the Kensington Runestone is proven fake. Jackson Crawford also presented a really good video on it. I grew up with the local mythology. It's a testament, I suppose, to both our desire for a tangible connection to our roots and our very human love of myth in general.
Oh, and Scott Wolter is one of ours, too. He's entertaining. Bonus fact; there are way more people of German descent in Minnesota than all our Scandinavians combined. Wolter himself would be one unless he was named through some other means. Go far back enough in history and you'll find the point where it doesn't really matter anyway.
You have to understand, Americans need to create our own myths. At least non-Native Americans. What ever we might have inherited from our ancestors has long, long been mixed, mingled, evolved, devolved and lost in vast blending of immigration and time. Sadly, with modern science, there's no more hope of establishing any sort of real mythology of our own. Paul Bunyan and Babe his blue ox... a whole boatload of myths about our own history... But... Öhman tried. We're doing the best we can over here!
New life goal: make a fake runestone Jimmy respects.
I watched a History Channel "documentary" back in like 2007 that claimed the Kengsington runestone was created by a band of Templars, who had fled to...Minnesota. Because, you see, Templars liked to use runes as a secret form of communication, especially when being persecuted by...people who were doing that. And, credit where credit's due, this was a creative way of getting around the "this doesn't make any sense as a Viking runestone" problem. It did this by introducing about 15 entirely new problems, but hey, whatever.
I love this kind of historical content!!! Just want you to know you are really appreciated and your work doesn’t go unnoticed!
I am a re-enactor and I’ll be referring your channel to my guild mates!!
You have very quickly become one of my favourite RUclipsrs. I love History, and, as anybody who watched Indiana Jones, and reading old national geographics from a young age, I am interested in archeology, though I want to study History and Literatur
Also, poplar trees (a general term for aspens and cottonwoods, all of the *Populus* genus) have very short lifespans, by tree standards. For reference, while some species of maple or oak can reach 3-400 years in age, a poplar would be extraordinarily lucky to exceed 100. If the tree had been present in 1362, there is only a moderate chance of that tree surviving into the 15th century, and no chance whatsoever of that tree reaching the year 1500.
Poplars often establish clonal colonies so that could account for some ambiguity, but... uh. Oof.
I really want to make a runestone now that says 'þú ert fáviti' just to see someone find it and actually act like the idiot I just told them they are (couldn't be bothered to make it more old Icelandic with this migraine but why should I 😄)
I just love the way you try to make sense of all the silliness out there.
The 'Terrible Swedes' is the common nickname for the athletic teams of Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas. They use stylised Viking as their emblem, but no horns on his helmet, unlike the Minnesota Vikings. Lindsborg is a heavily Swedish community, but I don't know of any runestones found in the area. LOL!
Invest in runestones today! They'll only go up in value!
I recently discovered your channel via a video you did with Bernadette Banner, and I’m loving it! Thank you for sharing your knowledge!
Same here. Seconded. I'd never have approached these topics otherwise (ETA: Okay, some of them maybe including this one since I did read about the Kensington runestone in a book "The Dead Ends of Archeology" - it's sadly a Czech book, otherwise I'd fully recommend it to fuel further Fake News videos). But somehow the combination of Welsh, history, and righteous historian rage is irresistible. :D
Fascinating stuff! Forgeries can be so interesting in their own right, thank you for this collection - and for the intro, comedy gold!
Thank you - the postcards are really pretty - and I loved Editing Jimmy's narration - Plus look after yourself please - self care is important
It's a miracle that there aren't more forger who trained as archaeologists or historians ;) You know how it should be done.
Is it some kind of work ethos that you just can't bring yourself to forge some nice historical document? Or are you just so good that you are not found out ;) (Just kidding, don't take it too serious)
Just pure sloth!
Personally, I actually had the urge to throw my 16th century Lithuanian coin into the excavation ditches during the field week to bamboozle everyone, since why exactly would there be a 16th century Lithuanian coin at a medieval site in Ireland? Unfortunately, greed and pesky ethics got in the way.
Maybe there are skilled archaeological fraudsters, and, they are so good, that we just don't know. 🤔
I know of someone who has claimed to create a reasonable fake item as a bet with his local vicar to see if it was identified as fake. Apparently it passed but the vicar owned up later.
Such an enjoyable watch, thanks Jimmy!
I borrowed tools from a history teacher and made a rune stone for a family friend. It's still in their flower-border 😅
I recently took a road trip to all the Menards in west central Minnesota - the shiplap we were using in our attic was discontinued mid-project - and Alexandria MN was one of the stops. While I was there I thought I’d check out the Kennington Runestone museum. It was a utterly charming little museum with a one room school house out back and a 4-H museum in the barn along side a replica Viking ship. Everything you could want from a small town museum. I was however very skeptical of the runestone itself. It’s nice to hear the real history.
Wonderful video, as always.
Mostly popping into the comments to say, good luck with the PhD stuff. My own dissertation/defense is only a few years behind me and I still vividly remember the feeling of near constant panic. Hang in there!
There's one in NSW, Australia! It's in one of Tolkien's scripts
I watched you do a bit of archery in another video today. it had played on from the previous video. I wasn't really paying attention, then I heard your distinguishable voice. You are not bad at archery by the way.
The Squirrels were laughing...
Just became a patron. We love you Jimmy!
No rune stones where I'm from, but we have a statue of an enormous squirrel and someone wrote "butts" in sharpie on a picnic table, so still cultured I guess.
You devoted student, you.
Thanks for the acknowledgement about the focus.
Glad you didn't fuss about reshooting
Catching up on your videos. Thank you for the fascinating company during my peasant jewelry job.
Came for the topics - subscribed for Jimmy’s delightful personality!
Hahaha oh Jimmy best of luck with all your stuff! I love the asides and real Jimmy moments. This and enthusiastic refutation of nonsense are what I'm here for!
Love your videos hope to see lots more :)
there was a Swedish school class that tried making a fake rune stone and posting it on a trading site (think Swedish eBay) to see how hard it would be to create a fake news story and it worked
“Use the right alphabet is forgery 101!”
…Jimmy
I need this on a shirt!!!!!
I will leave the ruins to the rest of you. It’s October 25 and grandson will need his costume wearable for Friday morning the 29!!
This was such an entertaining video. Glad I watched it.
Very good breakdown. Informative.
Well played, sir! I'm in Arizona, you covered our roon stone... Lol
I now want an authentic-looking runestone that says "my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard"
why do people even want to claim the runestones are historic anyway? Like of you want a cool rock in ur garden you don’t have to pretend a viking carved it
"I Narvi carved them" should have been a bit of a hint.
Thank you for making me smile😝😍
Love your Viking jewelry episode and this one is pretty shredder Aswell All Praise brother ⚔️🙏🏻🤘🏻❤️
Thanks for all of the crime tips!
Just kidding, great video, very funny how many of these things are out there.
I actually have a question that you might be able to do a video about. What is the idea behind the anount of saliva in some of the Norse mythology I've read about. Like the Kvasir story. But I think I've seen more references on people spitting in a big cauldron but I just can't remember where... Is that an original thing? Or a modern invention?
The Mead of Kevin? Great stuff! (What, doesn't anyone read Riordan?)
The info Jimmy is sharing brings me joy. I am from 🇿🇦, we don't even have roonstones. I just enjoy watching this. 😁
OH! We only have the Blombos Ochre stone which is pretty cool. (Blombos translated: Flower bush/shrub)
now i want to make a fake runestone with a proper alphabet and a proper layout that i would bury somewhere and then when somebody finds it one day and cares to actually translate it, it would say, in a phonetic english "you have just been bamboozled, but never give up, never let down" or some similar nonsense
11:58 Little bit of non-viking trivia, "I f*** your bread" is common curse among Slavs on Balkan peninsula
Love your work
The central problem with the Norse making their way into the Great Lakes area is this: how in the HELL do you expect them to portage a longship around Niagara Falls?
I am SO GLAD you spent the effort to make this & explain all the linguistic reasons these runes don’t check out! It seems most Minnesotans & Arizonans accept their runes aren’t real but, alas, I’ve met too many Okies who are incorrigibly wedded to the notion the runes here are Very True and Real. There is a small state college in Poteau who’s mascot is the Vikings…I’d wondered where that came from (there aren’t many Nordic folk here), but just now connected the dots together!
I’ve heard a number of people around here suggest that the Heavner runes were made by French explorers (usually lost, also usually LaSalle)…the French definitely left their mark on our maps & place names, but colonial-era French using “Viking” Runes is so silly I’m unsure wether to laugh or cry.
*NB: there is essentially no correct way to pronounce or spell anything in Oklahoma (starting with “Oklahoma” itself, but I digress); however, most folks ignore the ‘a’ in Heavner and pronounce Poteau ‘Poe-toe.’ Ignoring the letter ‘a’ is something of a tradition here, eg: “Kiaminchi Mountains” is “Kie-meen-chee Mown-tins.”
Im descendant of the Anishinaabe tribe in Quebec Canada and alot of French settlers who came here were from Normandy and married Native women or got adopted into tribes and a lot of Norse myths and folklore has been absorbed into Algonquin legends and stories in the 1600s. That's how long people held on to pagan traditions.
Thanks Jimmy, that was fun.
And enlightening.
I'm Minnesotan, and have actually seen the Kensington Runestone (years ago, I don't remember it well, but my family knew going in that it was fake so that's reassuring. The museum was not upfront about that.) To give you some idea of the scale of how far Kensington/Alexandria, MN are from the L'Anse aux Meadows archaeological site in Newfoundland where the Norse settled, it's a ~52 hour nonstop drive by car on modern highways. It's a comical assertion.
I think some additional important context to the Kensington Runestone is that it was "found" in 1898, and definitely comes at this time where European immigrants are trying to claim a right to be in the U.S. against nativists, which is why Italian Americans latch onto Columbus so much, and why Scandinavian Americans latch onto Leif Erikson (we have a statue of him near our state capitol). However, this really depends on the idea of buying into Manifest Destiny (that white people were fated to be here and have a glorious God-given right to be here).
It feels relevant that this runestone about Norsemen being chased across the forests and plains comes about 35 years after the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, the last real war fought on Minnesotan soil. It ran concurrent to the Civil War, and mostly took place around the Lower Sioux Community and New Ulm, MN (about 2.5 hours drive south of Kensington/Alexandria). It resulted in the Dakota and Ho-Chunk being interned at a concentration camp at Fort Snelling (which is in my metro area, Minneapolis/St. Paul, AKA the Twin Cities) and exiled to what is now Nebraska and North and South Dakota. It also was the cause for the execution of 38 Dakota men in the U.S.'s largest mass hanging on record.
The runestone would've been "found" 8 years after the absolutely brutal Wounded Knee Massacre (1890) of Lakota people in South Dakota, marking the end of the Ghost Dance War (1890-1). The Ghost Dance War is considered to be the last of the Sioux Wars; by the 1890's the U.S. is consolidating transcontinental power all across the West. Also I don't know what month the runestone was "found," but in October of 1898, there's a smaller skirmish called the Battle of Sugar Point up on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota (about 2.5 hours drive north of Kensington), fought between the Pillager Band of Ojibwe and U.S. Infantry.
I lay all this out here because the U.S. Dakota War would've been within living memory (and Wounded Knee would've been extremely fresh in the mind) but the Old West was becoming mythologized at the time as Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show recruited indigenous veterans of these wars to reenact them for white viewers. New Ulm especially has a mythology of martyred settlers, and as you can guess by the name, German immigrants made up a majority of the town (with Scandinavians close behind). European immigrant Minnesotans had an investment in the mythology of martyrdom by the indigenous peoples and a right to push ever westward, which is why it stands out to me that the Kensington Runestone says that indigenous peoples kept chasing the Norse west.
We've got some runestones in Rhode island. One person claimed he made it because he was bored in the 60s, but others claim they saw it way earlier in time.
I just discovered your channel today; I love it -- Very good, knowledgeable content. Thanks for that! I live in balmy Minnesota and a couple years ago a friend and I took a bit of a road trip to see the Kensington Fraud Stone -- It was awesome. It's in a little museum in Alexandria and it's actually quite nice and the people running the museum were very nice as well. I think people want to believe it's real (I did 40 years ago) but we all know it's fake.
I once carved runes onto a bit of sandstone I found by Lake Superior... I wonder what happened to it. :)
Thanks again!
From one mentally crumpled PhD student to another, thank you for giving me yet another way to avoid working on my literature review. I really enjoy your videos. When we aren't in lockdown (Australia), I enjoy working on recreating 10th - 11th century Finnish costume and random Viking armour/helms for SCA and metal weapons use (e.g. Gjermundbu helmet ). Totally unrelated to my PhD, which is molecular biology.
Great video. I'm going to *have* to find an excuse to say "Use the right alphabet, that's like Forgery 101" now, because that is like. Top ten sentences of all time!
I thought you'd have mentioned the (non-fake) runestone in Edinburgh. I think it looked a lot better next to the castle rather in a flowerbed surrounded by tower blocks.
Love it. I grew up in Oklahoma, didn't know about the Heavener Runestones until about 10 years ago. I still haven't visited. I wonder, considering the other stone you mentioned, with bad spellings of Gnomedal or Glomdal, if there wasn't some kind of Norse revival/reclamation movement in the 20s or so calling themselves something to that effect.
In the American version of, "The Pokemon Movie!". Yes, the very first one, with Mewtwo. Jessie and James show up to row our main character to a tournament... Horned hats, making merry jokes about the Minnesota Vikings. I mostly bring it up because I thought you'd find that entertaining.
I grew up near Alexandria, MN and I've traveled all over the U.S. for work. It's still my favorite small town. If anyone does go to the Runestone Museum in Alexandria, don't miss Roers Family Bakery (offers the most delicious rhubarb filled raised donuts you will ever think of eating, when they're in season), It's just 2 blocks south of the museum on Broadway St. The 28 foot tall Viking statue, Big Ole, is just north of the museum and is across the street from The Depot Deck Bar. OK... the Runestone's fake but the town is quaint and scenic surrounded by beautiful lakes with lots to do. Spend some time at Carlos Creek Winery, or golf at Arrowwood Resort.
Jumping in first to say I didn't notice the out of focus because I'm always far too busy nosying out the postcards and pictures to worry about looking at the host in the beginning of the video 😊 Also, may I just say as a complete noob on the lighting and camera business, I will say I thought the lighting at 9.06 when you noted something had gone wrong - was more flattering. Now, you're a good looking fellow, so that's not a jab - just letting you know the thought that ran through my mind at the change of lighting!
Very interesting video - why do people always listen to the one person who doesn't agree with the rest of the experts from their field? Very silly.