Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways. I don't know. You never know. The story
Speaker 1: is of things we simply don't know the answer too. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: welcome to an episode of Thinking Sideways the podcast. An episode. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say another because maybe this is
Speaker 1: their first good point. It's an episode. Yeah, I'm Devin,
Speaker 1: I'm joined by and and we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: an unsolved mystery. In case that's not how you found us.
Speaker 1: This is a big one too. It's you know what,
Speaker 1: I actually think this one is really really interesting. It
Speaker 1: is not so big, but it was heavy. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: had a really hard time in the research of this.
Speaker 1: Just there's so you and I talked about this earlier.
Speaker 1: Is it? There's a lot of minutia in it, and
Speaker 1: I did I started to get ahead. Ye happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the Kensington runestone today. R
Speaker 1: It's runestone. In eighteen nine, a Swedish immigrant named Olaf
Speaker 1: Allman found a two hundred pounds slab of sandstone also
Speaker 1: called graystone because it's gray but it's sandstone, in Solemn, Minnesota.
Speaker 1: It was found when he was clearing an area of
Speaker 1: what some websites report is unclaimed, but upon further digging.
Speaker 1: Was totally his property, but it was just kind of
Speaker 1: an empty unreclaimed yeah, reclaimed maybe, um. But he was
Speaker 1: clearing trees from it, and he fell a tree and
Speaker 1: there was a stone that was entwined in the roots.
Speaker 1: Probably again the stories and I'm inclined to believe that
Speaker 1: it was entwined in the roots, but well, there's some
Speaker 1: evidence to show that there were roots growing against it,
Speaker 1: whether it was on the ground and they were directly
Speaker 1: under or it was underground. It was it was underground,
Speaker 1: it wasn't you couldn't see the top of it. You
Speaker 1: couldn't see any part of it from the ground. But
Speaker 1: whether it was actually entwined in the roots or if
Speaker 1: it was kind of just nearby, hard to tell. And
Speaker 1: this is this is not like a oh the Internet retelling.
Speaker 1: It's hard to tell. Literally, the three people that were
Speaker 1: there when I was discovered, none of them can agree,
Speaker 1: Like they don't remember actually what day it was found,
Speaker 1: or like what time of day or what exactly they
Speaker 1: were doing or anything like that. One of those situations.
Speaker 1: One of those. So that's why you know, I witness
Speaker 1: testimony is it's hard, Well, it's so varied. One person said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was November eight, and the other one said, no,
Speaker 1: it was August eleven, right, eleven eight or eight eleven. Think, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's hard to tell, so we're just gonna say I
Speaker 1: think it was entwined in roots in the fall of
Speaker 1: the Fall of eight. He named this stone after the
Speaker 1: closest settlement, which was Kensington, because I thought Minnesota he was,
Speaker 1: but that's like the county area. The closest settlement was
Speaker 1: town Village. I guess it was very small, large settlement
Speaker 1: with that grouping of people. The stone was covered in
Speaker 1: ruins and was said to be from about thirteen sixty two.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry the year at thirteen sixty two. It apparently
Speaker 1: tells the account of some Scandinavian explorers, and if this
Speaker 1: is the case, many of our listeners will have already
Speaker 1: realized that means that these Scandinavian explorers managed to quote
Speaker 1: unquote discover right the New World like a hundred years
Speaker 1: before Christopher Columbus, actually well over a hundred years because
Speaker 1: a little because I wait, if you think about Europeans
Speaker 1: coming here, you know, like the British and everybody like that,
Speaker 1: they settled on the coast. But we didn't actually penetrate
Speaker 1: as far into the interior. Is this for a long
Speaker 1: time after that? Right? So yeah, so yes, you're right,
Speaker 1: more than a hundred years before, way back. So the
Speaker 1: stone inscription has been translated a number of different ways.
Speaker 1: We're just going to use the text that's on Wikipedia
Speaker 1: to start with, and then we'll talk about some of
Speaker 1: the discrepancies later. Got it. So this is our baseline.
Speaker 1: This is our baseline. What I would say is pretty
Speaker 1: much accepted as the translation. Uh, the sorry, and I
Speaker 1: should mention the front of the stone and then one
Speaker 1: of the sides of the stone are carved, so we've
Speaker 1: got it's kind of a monolith in terms of shape,
Speaker 1: it's a rectangle. We've got four faces too, you know,
Speaker 1: the front and back that are larger, and then two
Speaker 1: slimmer sides, and then the top and the bottom. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: And there's nothing on top and nothing on top and bottom,
Speaker 1: nothing on the back one of the sides or the back,
Speaker 1: but something on the well, I guess you know what
Speaker 1: you'd call the front and one of the sides. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think it's the front, then they is it the
Speaker 1: right side? If you were looking directly at the inscription,
Speaker 1: I believe it's the right side. The left side, is it?
Speaker 1: I think so? Okay. So the front says eight Gotlanders
Speaker 1: or Swedes and twenty two Northmen or north Norwegian Norwegian.
Speaker 1: On this acquisition, journey from Vinland, far from the west,
Speaker 1: we had a camp by two shelters. One day's journey
Speaker 1: north from this stone, we were fishing. One day after
Speaker 1: we came home we found ten men red from blood
Speaker 1: and dead. Maria saved from evil. And then the side says,
Speaker 1: there are ten men by the inland sea to look
Speaker 1: after our ships. Fourteen days journey from the peninsula or island,
Speaker 1: year thirteen sixty two, the inland see referring perhaps to
Speaker 1: one of the Great lakes. It's possible there's some theories
Speaker 1: out there that actually this little parcel of land that
Speaker 1: it was found on, it was found on an incline
Speaker 1: or like a little grassy knoll area, and that it
Speaker 1: could have it was kind of rounded by wetland's much
Speaker 1: further away, but that at that time it could have
Speaker 1: been that it was more of a wetland lake area,
Speaker 1: so the waters had receded since receded, but that the
Speaker 1: place that the stone was found was in fact a
Speaker 1: small island on a small body of water, but it
Speaker 1: could also be a great lake. It's not specified. I've
Speaker 1: also seen stuff that to answer part of what your
Speaker 1: question is is that to get there, they went north
Speaker 1: of the United States where our borders are, came in
Speaker 1: through Canada, and then that runs you into the Great Lakes.
Speaker 1: I can't remember the name of the inlet or the
Speaker 1: channel that you can use, but they use something like
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean, there is there was a
Speaker 1: way to do that. I'm not sure that the lakes
Speaker 1: naturally interconnected, and I should know this. You know, they
Speaker 1: taught me the stuff, and I believe that for the
Speaker 1: most part, they were maybe not enough to do large
Speaker 1: shipping vessels like today. That was that man altered that.
Speaker 1: But they were connected in some fashion, and so I
Speaker 1: think that that is the research that I was doing
Speaker 1: about how did they get there. It's that the lakes
Speaker 1: are loosely interconnected, and so they they theoretically could have
Speaker 1: made their way. Doesn't explain where the stone was found,
Speaker 1: but it gets him into the area. Is yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a big kind of close to that area. And then
Speaker 1: then they got to hoof it overland for quite a
Speaker 1: long ways for me, A little ways for sure. So
Speaker 1: this stone was found and then kind of held onto
Speaker 1: a little bit and then allman kind of thought, well,
Speaker 1: maybe I don't know that it says it's from thirteen
Speaker 1: sixty two. This was This was his actual thought pattern.
Speaker 1: In case you guys were wondering, he wrote it down
Speaker 1: in his diary. He said, I don't know, like it
Speaker 1: was kind of from I'm kidding. Sorry. When when he
Speaker 1: found it was he able to read the ruins himself
Speaker 1: or decipher them. So this is kind of one of
Speaker 1: the things about this story that's interesting. Most of the
Speaker 1: stories that you'll hear there's so there's two camps that
Speaker 1: you hear this story from, and they're both sure that
Speaker 1: they're right. One camp is this is a huge hoax,
Speaker 1: This isn't actually from that time. The other camp is, no,
Speaker 1: this is real. And most of the people who say no,
Speaker 1: this is real, they say it was real because the
Speaker 1: guy who found it was totally illiterate, which is not
Speaker 1: the case. This this guy omen was actually he was
Speaker 1: a Swedish immigrant. He went to school in Sweden where
Speaker 1: he would have learned runes. So word for word, perhaps
Speaker 1: not were the US in common usage in the end
Speaker 1: of the eighteen hundreds and Sweden. Still. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: what I wasn't sure because I had seen some stuff
Speaker 1: that said he would have had books with runes, but
Speaker 1: wouldn't have necessarily been reading. I mean, it wasn't the
Speaker 1: it wasn't the number one of the languages, but they
Speaker 1: were still it was still taught in school, kind of
Speaker 1: like cursive is still taught in the United States, but taught. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they still teach it. Yeah, So it's one of those
Speaker 1: things right where it's like, well, nobody uses that, but
Speaker 1: you learn it. And well anyway, so he probably likely
Speaker 1: would have been able to decipher at least some of it. Regardless.
Speaker 1: It was an old stone he found on his property
Speaker 1: and he thought, hey, maybe we should get this assessed
Speaker 1: by somebody. So it was first assessed for authenticity by
Speaker 1: a professor at the University of Minnesota. And it's unclear
Speaker 1: if this professor saw the actual stone, like they actually
Speaker 1: took the stone to him to look at, or if
Speaker 1: one of these copies of texts written copies of the
Speaker 1: text were just sent to him. That would be a
Speaker 1: lot easier, and if it would be a lot easier,
Speaker 1: but it's been mentioned that most of the written copies
Speaker 1: of the text were kind of poorly and crudely done.
Speaker 1: Well were they handwritten copies or were they rubbing? I
Speaker 1: think they were handwritten copies, like somebody who sat down
Speaker 1: and tried to write them, and that it may have
Speaker 1: been copied by somebody who didn't actually write rooms that
Speaker 1: often or didn't know so that it seems to be
Speaker 1: there's definitely some speculation that, uh, the written copies of
Speaker 1: these rooms were not good, maybe to the point of
Speaker 1: detrimentally to people being able to tell if linguistically it
Speaker 1: was correct or not. And a lot of the copies
Speaker 1: written copies of these have like very big differences in it, uh,
Speaker 1: lots of discrepancies happening. So I think it's likely that
Speaker 1: he actually just saw a piece of paper. Um, but
Speaker 1: he dismissed it immediately. He said it was a really
Speaker 1: poor attempt at forgery. And like I said, I can't
Speaker 1: tell with accuracy if if he you know, saw the
Speaker 1: paper or not, but if you saw the real thing, yeah,
Speaker 1: if it was the paper, I I just want to say, like, well,
Speaker 1: how would he know? And professor of linguistics linguistics, yeah,
Speaker 1: specializing in um, Norse and Swedish, Scandinavian ruin and language studies.
Speaker 1: So he didn't like it. He didn't what next? Then?
Speaker 1: The stone, the actual stone, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: uh In, was sent to Northwestern University. The opinion there
Speaker 1: as that while the stone itself was pretty weathered, the
Speaker 1: inscription seemed to be lighter and done more recently. The
Speaker 1: stone was photographed, and um, apparently some archaeological venture was
Speaker 1: done kind of near where the stone was lightly but
Speaker 1: I don't think it was any It wasn't like a
Speaker 1: huge scale. They weren't, you know, thinking, oh, there's a
Speaker 1: huge settlement here, we gotta dig six No. I think
Speaker 1: it was just kind of some slight excavation around where
Speaker 1: he said he found the stone, just to see. But
Speaker 1: he had been clearing the land, so it's not as
Speaker 1: though he wasn't preserving it. You know, he didn't find
Speaker 1: the stone and go oh oh, no, I better stop
Speaker 1: felling all these trees and make sure that somebody could
Speaker 1: find something if there is anything. Oh yeah, I can
Speaker 1: see A year later, Um, I think it was over there.
Speaker 1: But that is literally what happened. I mean, they started
Speaker 1: interviewing the three people right and as I said, like,
Speaker 1: they couldn't even agree on what month they had found it,
Speaker 1: let alone where they had found it. So well, if
Speaker 1: he's if he's working the land and he's clearing trees
Speaker 1: and he's changing the topography. I don't know if either
Speaker 1: of you have ever been to a construction site where
Speaker 1: they're doing major grade work. But you go on on
Speaker 1: day one and you've got a good idea where things are,
Speaker 1: and and then if you leave for a week, you're
Speaker 1: kind of lost because by the time you come back
Speaker 1: everything has changed. But stretched that over the course of
Speaker 1: a year, and you just kind of keep getting used
Speaker 1: to it a little bit by a little bit and
Speaker 1: don't quite remember where things were before. That's easy to
Speaker 1: understand why they had no idea where they found it.
Speaker 1: True that I don't know if they all saw. They
Speaker 1: didn't even see the ruins to begin with, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: when when they first covered the stone, you know they
Speaker 1: saw they saw they did, actually they saw a part
Speaker 1: of it and they tried to clear This is another
Speaker 1: thing that affects the They the ruins on the side
Speaker 1: were cleaned off with a nail. They just took a
Speaker 1: nail and scraped away, which would obviously alter the ability
Speaker 1: to actually accurately date when that had happened. Um, and
Speaker 1: that's part of the reason that they had a different
Speaker 1: color because they were freshly scraped. So again it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's hard to tell with that if they just did
Speaker 1: a really good job scraping the runes Queen so they
Speaker 1: could see what was going on or what happened there. Regardless,
Speaker 1: nothing was reported to be found from this excavation, exploration,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it. And the stone was
Speaker 1: returned to Omen in March of eight and since everybody
Speaker 1: said it was pretty much just worthless, it wasn't really
Speaker 1: an artifact. It was you know, totally fake. He just
Speaker 1: used it as a stepping stone, uh, like the kind
Speaker 1: of entryway stepping stone to his granary. Just stuck it
Speaker 1: right in there, ruins down. He wasn't treading on the runes,
Speaker 1: but he did. He just used it as a as
Speaker 1: the entry stone. Well the backside is the flat side, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so of course they'd be the one he uses a
Speaker 1: step Yeah, so he just did that. Yeah, don't get
Speaker 1: no respect. Yeah, so interest waned in this rude stone.
Speaker 1: But it had been kind of a big media you know,
Speaker 1: been shipped around a little bit. Yeah, but there, you know,
Speaker 1: there had been some newspaper articles. It had been kind
Speaker 1: of a big deal. Everybody said, that's a hoax. And
Speaker 1: he said, all right, fine, it's a hoax. I'm going
Speaker 1: to use it as a stepping stone. A historian. Mr.
Speaker 1: Holland was investigating the possibility of a Norwegian settlement in
Speaker 1: Minnesota and became aware of the stone and became, of
Speaker 1: course very interested in the stone as it might provide
Speaker 1: some I don't know, evidence or something like that. So
Speaker 1: he uh went over to the Kensington area and spoke
Speaker 1: with Almond about the stone, um, and they pulled it
Speaker 1: out of the ground and he examined it, and at
Speaker 1: about this time, the Minnesota Historical Society decided, Oh, I
Speaker 1: guess we'll investigate this too. Okay, guys, oh I guess
Speaker 1: we should because it's popular again, Yeah, that people are.
Speaker 1: The fact that Holland got interested in it, he kind
Speaker 1: of really drummed up a lot of support for it,
Speaker 1: for its authenticity. He he thought it was real really
Speaker 1: kind of from the get go, you know, it was
Speaker 1: kind of one of those confirmation bias things where he
Speaker 1: he thought, oh, yeah, the Norwegians totally settled this area
Speaker 1: way earlier than we think. And then he heard about
Speaker 1: the stone and he said, see, it's totally it's real.
Speaker 1: Of course that's real, because I've been thinking this thing
Speaker 1: and now I found some proof for it. The Minnesota
Speaker 1: Historical Society hired a man named Newton Winchell, and he
Speaker 1: started collecting Affidavid's from the people who were there when
Speaker 1: the stone was found and then also family and friends. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of trying to, you know, collect the stories of
Speaker 1: it and see if maybe they had created this forgery
Speaker 1: or anything like that. Uh. And he was also a geologist,
Speaker 1: so they thought that he would probably be a pretty
Speaker 1: good person to carry out this investigation. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know why, but he interviewed a lot of locals
Speaker 1: as well as omens family, and interviewed Holland and some linguists.
Speaker 1: And the linguists pretty much to a one said no,
Speaker 1: this is this is a hoax. But Holland and Witchell,
Speaker 1: we're both really convinced that it was real. For a
Speaker 1: number of reasons that will lay out in a couple
Speaker 1: of minutes. Holland and Winchell definitely thought it was real.
Speaker 1: The reason that they think it's real is because linguists
Speaker 1: by and large are saying that this, the language used
Speaker 1: on this stone is not consistent with with eleventh century
Speaker 1: Scandinavian grammar, which is fair. The linguists were saying that
Speaker 1: it was a poor forgery of eleventh century Scandinavian grammar,
Speaker 1: and you know, uh, it should be fourteenth century. So
Speaker 1: I'm not totally sure why it's the eleventh century that
Speaker 1: they're talking about in terms of grammar. And you know,
Speaker 1: as we know, language is a living thing, so it
Speaker 1: does change. It allows people to be able to pinpoint
Speaker 1: and say this is when this language is from, based
Speaker 1: on the slang or the way that grammars used, or
Speaker 1: cases or things like that in some In some languages,
Speaker 1: that is true, I know, for both the written and
Speaker 1: the verbal form. For some other languages, though, I know
Speaker 1: that though the spoken version may you know, ebb and
Speaker 1: wane back and forth and change, the written version is
Speaker 1: not to make a pun here, but it's set in stone.
Speaker 1: It is one way. This is how it's done, and
Speaker 1: it's not built to be flexible, and it's not allowed
Speaker 1: to be flexible. So I wonder if that's why they're
Speaker 1: saying it's not consistent with the eleventh century. And I
Speaker 1: unfortunately I read this as well in the research and
Speaker 1: never thought to look into that. But I wonder if
Speaker 1: that's the reason is that there was they say from
Speaker 1: time A to B it didn't it did never change. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I think probably that's the case. I also think
Speaker 1: you've to take into consideration how long this group would
Speaker 1: have had to have been traveling to make it to Minnesota.
Speaker 1: So I think they, you know, kind of backlook obviously
Speaker 1: not three years. They weren't. They weren't obviously for three years.
Speaker 1: But if you can say, you know, maybe fifty years
Speaker 1: then or even ten, I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 1: how long it takes Scandinavians to get across the ocean
Speaker 1: at this time and then and then make landfall and
Speaker 1: then make it all the way to minnesotaeh he was.
Speaker 1: I could take a while. It would take it's it's
Speaker 1: about a six to nine months journey. I'm ballparking here.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing to get from one to the other across
Speaker 1: the ocean, and then from there the exploration process would
Speaker 1: be long and drawn out. So I can see where
Speaker 1: I could see where ten maybe even fifteen years maybe,
Speaker 1: but I would imagine guys would get homesick after a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you would think. But also they were here. If they
Speaker 1: were around that long, you think there'd be more artifacts
Speaker 1: left over. Yeah, yeah, yes, that's true. The stone's ownership.
Speaker 1: You may be wondering, well, who owned the stone, because
Speaker 1: Olman owned it for a while. Well, he owned it
Speaker 1: until nineteen o seven, at which point Holland purchased it
Speaker 1: for I believe it was ten dollars. Well it was,
Speaker 1: you know, ten dollars in early nine hundreds, so that's
Speaker 1: a lot more than we normally think of it. But
Speaker 1: when you hear how much he tried to sell it for,
Speaker 1: you will galyze it was absolutely a good deal. He
Speaker 1: tried to sell it to the Minnesota Historical Society for
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars in nineteen ten. Holland and, well, that's
Speaker 1: some serious appreciation. It is. Obviously they said no, thank you.
Speaker 1: But in nineteen forty eight on the I guess I
Speaker 1: haven't really mentioned that the authenticity of the stone has
Speaker 1: never really been like a yes, everybody says it's uh
Speaker 1: this it's a hoax, or it's not. It's never been
Speaker 1: agreed upon. It's always had this huge ebb and flow.
Speaker 1: So it's gone through periods of legitimacy, validated by this
Speaker 1: fact that in nineteen forty eight, the stone was on
Speaker 1: display at the Smithsonian Institute in d C. For a
Speaker 1: full year. And they don't really they don't put things
Speaker 1: they think are fake in the in the usually not
Speaker 1: normally not Usually they've displayed things they've discovered later on
Speaker 1: we're fake. But everything they can discern it's real. That's
Speaker 1: the only reason to go up. Yeah. So the curator
Speaker 1: actually said of the stone that it is quote probably
Speaker 1: the most important archaeological object yet found in North America
Speaker 1: unquote when it was in the Smithsonian apparently, so he
Speaker 1: really thought it was real. Obviously, after the year long
Speaker 1: display in the Smithsonian, the stone was set up as
Speaker 1: a permanent exhibit or I guess, the only exhibit at
Speaker 1: the room Stone Museum in Alexandria, Minnesota. I was just thinking, man,
Speaker 1: this to be. It can't be the most exciting museum
Speaker 1: to go to. Hey, kids, we're gonna take field trip. Okay,
Speaker 1: next stop is this thing that's our only stop? Actually
Speaker 1: a stone? Yeah? And next up a stone? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of an interpretive center as well, right,
Speaker 1: I mean it can't. It's not just a stone in
Speaker 1: the middle of a room. Um, it did. It also
Speaker 1: was shown at the New York World's Fair. It got around.
Speaker 1: It did get around it. Uh. It also went to
Speaker 1: Norway for a year or two. It's so it's been
Speaker 1: around and again, you know, it's been this evan flow
Speaker 1: of how you know, when people are like on the yeah,
Speaker 1: it's real train and goes to interesting places, and when
Speaker 1: people are on the no, it's fake train, it stays boring.
Speaker 1: I say it's real. It's a rock for sure. It's
Speaker 1: definitely rock. I would agree with, Yeah, that's it. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's rock. So if you want to email us, you know,
Speaker 1: we got to talk about theories. Okay, there's many of them.
Speaker 1: There's a few, you know, my mo and I was
Speaker 1: about to say, I'm looking at this, I'm like, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, you broke this up into two very big categories.
Speaker 1: There's four categories. Yeah, just look harder, Steve, there's four categories. Technically, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a technicality. Yeah. But as I've said, I will
Speaker 1: say again, I will continue to say. Everybody who's ever
Speaker 1: written about the Runestone is a percent sure that they
Speaker 1: are right, that it is either totally a hoax or
Speaker 1: totally not. There's very little stuff out there about somebody's saying, well,
Speaker 1: it could be this, and I did find two theories
Speaker 1: and both of them are good. I think that kind
Speaker 1: of land sort of in the middle. But pretty much
Speaker 1: everybody else is in their camp. All right, let's let's
Speaker 1: camp one. Camp one is it's a hoax. Okay, here's
Speaker 1: why this word that I'm gonna make Joe pronounce them
Speaker 1: that I'm gonna spell, but I I know I'm mispronouncing that. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a Norse word. Yeah, it's spelled O p d
Speaker 1: A g E l s e f A r d,
Speaker 1: which was the word that's translated into voyage of discovery.
Speaker 1: And apparently it did not occur in the Norse language
Speaker 1: until several centuries after the thirteen sixty two inscription date,
Speaker 1: putting it in approximately the sixteenth century. There's a bit
Speaker 1: of controversy regarding this issue because one of the ruins,
Speaker 1: which is the thirst room the theory as run it,
Speaker 1: so it can be used in a number of different ways.
Speaker 1: Ruins are kind of tricky that way. Ruins are phonetic
Speaker 1: in that right, So it's not like each room equates
Speaker 1: to one letter in the English language that spells out
Speaker 1: a word that probably doesn't even sound like you think
Speaker 1: it's going to sound because we don't say words the
Speaker 1: right way. It's each room represents a sound. Okay, nodding
Speaker 1: slowly in this student, Yes, I'm on, I'm on board
Speaker 1: with that, all right. So there is a run that's
Speaker 1: used in that word. Um, the thirst run is how
Speaker 1: I'm going to pronounce it, and it could have been
Speaker 1: used to represent a t sound, which would have made
Speaker 1: the word that we spelled earlier, the obstacle per credit card,
Speaker 1: into a different word, which means journey of acquisition, which
Speaker 1: was a standard word that was used in the century,
Speaker 1: instead of the journey of discovery, which is the word
Speaker 1: that it's commonly translated as, which wasn't common until the
Speaker 1: sixteenth century. Okay, because as you say, I know I
Speaker 1: had seen some sources that when I saw the translation,
Speaker 1: it was really weird because it was it was a
Speaker 1: word slash word slash word slash, you know, voyage of
Speaker 1: something something something something something and pick it was like
Speaker 1: choose your own adventure. Yeah, and so I will mention
Speaker 1: that if this run is used to represent the t
Speaker 1: sound it's used, it's the only place it's used to
Speaker 1: represent that sound in the on the entire rune stone.
Speaker 1: They use the more standard runes to represent that sound
Speaker 1: everywhere else. But it is speculated that it was that
Speaker 1: use of that word. I don't know. Maybe it's like
Speaker 1: I can't spell available to save my life, right, everybody
Speaker 1: has those words where it's like I think it's spelled
Speaker 1: this way, which I don't know. Maybe that so this
Speaker 1: guy had a little block when it came to that word.
Speaker 1: And you're carving in stone. It's not like you can erase,
Speaker 1: go back. You know, that doesn't exist. It's just whatever
Speaker 1: it is. The next issue is the issue of cases
Speaker 1: on the stone as No, it's that in like tenses. Okay,
Speaker 1: I was just trying to make sure because I never noticed.
Speaker 1: I always think of cases as upper and lower case
Speaker 1: like we do in English, so that's why I was
Speaker 1: just I never saw anything like that. Runs are very uniform,
Speaker 1: so that's why I was confused by that. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's um like the you know, plural singular I we
Speaker 1: view them. Okay, that that that makes more sense, and
Speaker 1: I always struggle with linguistics, so this is why I
Speaker 1: asked this question. Until the fifteenth century, there were four
Speaker 1: cases in the North Scandinavian language that the Ruin Stone
Speaker 1: is written in UH, and that was later abandoned for
Speaker 1: two cases, which is simpler. It's a good idea, yea think.
Speaker 1: So please don't ask me a lot of detail because
Speaker 1: I am not linguistics person. I didn't want to delve
Speaker 1: too deep into this because it would be an hour
Speaker 1: and a half on is why these cases are this way? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's this is not such a inter shattering mystery. I agree,
Speaker 1: I absolutely agree. You can afford to spend weeks and
Speaker 1: weeks and weeks learning about this stuff. Yeah. Anyway, apparently
Speaker 1: the stone uses just the two cases instead of the
Speaker 1: more common four cases, which would have been common at
Speaker 1: the time. Again, not really, as Joe was saying, a
Speaker 1: problem for me, as much you're carving in stone, you
Speaker 1: got like ten dead people next to you. It's not
Speaker 1: that long. It's not that long of a it's not
Speaker 1: that long of a text. So while people who are
Speaker 1: way better versed in linguistics than me may shout, yes,
Speaker 1: that is totally shattering and it's strong proof against this
Speaker 1: being real. I don't think it's that big of a deal.
Speaker 1: It's what what was it? Ten lines eight lines long?
Speaker 1: Is what this is? That's it. Yeah, it's there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of room for messing around anything kind of yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you're not going to get all fancy with it.
Speaker 1: And by the way, they I don't think they had
Speaker 1: the corpses right next to them. I think they were
Speaker 1: like a day's ride away or something like that. Okay, sorry,
Speaker 1: we'll forget about painting a beautiful picture. Okay, waxing pot.
Speaker 1: You had a bunch of corpses. Yeah, apparently I don't
Speaker 1: read runes, so I cannot confirm or deny this. But apparently,
Speaker 1: according to some sources, the inscription uses the English spelling
Speaker 1: of dead, not d E A D, but d E
Speaker 1: D with runes phonetically instead of what the Norse world
Speaker 1: would have been. Again, I can either confirm nor deny,
Speaker 1: but this is something that people say. Yeah, no, I
Speaker 1: also have to ride through the middle of that one, okay,
Speaker 1: or maybe maybe dead beats something else in Scandinavian. One
Speaker 1: would presume that the people who were translating it wouldn't
Speaker 1: know that though instead of saying no, it's spelled the
Speaker 1: wrong way, you would hope. Yeah. And finally, as we
Speaker 1: mentioned before, the stone itself was weathered, but the inscription
Speaker 1: wasn't weathered. So the stone was obviously a very old stone,
Speaker 1: but the inscription itself looked much newer. So, you know,
Speaker 1: the edges weren't as degraded as you would expect to
Speaker 1: see given the age, and where that you would expect
Speaker 1: to see on fine lines like that Steve's looking, and
Speaker 1: not cut very deeply into the stone really, so you
Speaker 1: would see a lot of where if it was exposed
Speaker 1: to the elements, like on the edges of what's the
Speaker 1: ruins that have been carved, they wouldn't it was if
Speaker 1: it was above ground the whole time. Yeah, I can
Speaker 1: see that. That's exactly my point to write. It was buried,
Speaker 1: So I don't think it was meant to be buried.
Speaker 1: I don't think it was originally buried. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of evidence to suggest that it was put upright like
Speaker 1: a like a headstone almost. Yeah, Yeah, so it was
Speaker 1: part of it was buried and then the rest of
Speaker 1: it got buried over time. You would expect to see
Speaker 1: probably more where than necessarily you see currently on it.
Speaker 1: But again it comes back to you know, they cleaned
Speaker 1: it off with a nail, like who knows? Who knows?
Speaker 1: So if this is a hoax, the next big question
Speaker 1: is who created the hoax? Who created Well, he has
Speaker 1: been number one suspect right then, of course is the
Speaker 1: number one suspect, And I don't think it was him.
Speaker 1: What would you know? The is one of those things
Speaker 1: I asked this every time we talked about a hoax.
Speaker 1: What are you going to get out of the hoax?
Speaker 1: Like he actually made ten bucks? Well, no, ignoring the
Speaker 1: financial gain, I mean easy trying to to get some
Speaker 1: notoriety out of it, like I never understand what people
Speaker 1: hope to gain from from pulling the wool over people's else. Well,
Speaker 1: that for me is I think the biggest reason that
Speaker 1: I don't think it's Almen, right. I mean, he found
Speaker 1: it eventually brought it to people's attention. They said it's
Speaker 1: a hoax. Here have it back, and he said, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to use it as a stepping stone.
Speaker 1: Then yeah, exactly. He didn't. He was never a vocal
Speaker 1: advocate for its authenticity. He was always throughout the entire
Speaker 1: time just kind of standing back saying I found this thing.
Speaker 1: Is it? What is it? And people said, here, it's
Speaker 1: this thing, and he goes Okay. You would think that
Speaker 1: if somebody had the wherewithal to make a hoax like that,
Speaker 1: they would be brazen enough to keep pushing that it
Speaker 1: was real. I mean we see this all the time.
Speaker 1: How many books have come out in the past decade
Speaker 1: that are supposed to be pure fact and they turn
Speaker 1: out to be pure fiction, But the person who wrote
Speaker 1: it just continually, you know, goes on TV and does
Speaker 1: everything they can to defend that it's real. Those people
Speaker 1: and they've got big brass ones, they are just they're
Speaker 1: holding it up and this guy didn't do that at all. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think that if you're gonna if you're
Speaker 1: gonna pull off a hoax that involves carving things in stone,
Speaker 1: to what you want to do is you want to
Speaker 1: carve the eleventh fift Commandments into a stone tablet. I've
Speaker 1: found the Lost five Commandments. That's what I would do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know that's what you would do. Yeah, maybe some
Speaker 1: cool commandments in there too. Uh No, I think it's
Speaker 1: I think it's definitely not Alman. I think he definitely
Speaker 1: isn't the one. So who else created? Right? And I
Speaker 1: think you know, the other big question is exactly that.
Speaker 1: And the only other option is that somebody spent some
Speaker 1: time created this hoax, dropped it off on some abandoned
Speaker 1: land for a while because it was buried near a tree, right,
Speaker 1: and the tree was like forty years old, and hoped
Speaker 1: someone would find it and recognize what it was and
Speaker 1: bring it to people's attention. So who was the historian
Speaker 1: was so fascinated by the prospect of Norrisman coming to Minnesota.
Speaker 1: Mr Holland, Yeah, so you suspecting him? I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't because I don't think that he would have left
Speaker 1: it up to chance as much as that, Right, that's
Speaker 1: a big risk to take. And he wasn't that old
Speaker 1: of a man. I mean, if it's if it's in
Speaker 1: the roots of a forty year old tree, it's had
Speaker 1: to have been there at least forty years. I got
Speaker 1: the we'll talk about that, well, ballpark is we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that. But my my point is I got the
Speaker 1: impression that he was a forty something to fifty something
Speaker 1: year old man, not an eighty year old man. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's true. He was a younger man, which means that
Speaker 1: he would have had to done it as an adolescent. Yeah. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so the tree itself was forty years old. And again
Speaker 1: this is one of those facts I go back and
Speaker 1: forth on in terms of if I what I believe.
Speaker 1: But apparently, and I don't know how, because they uprooted
Speaker 1: the tree and it was gone, they didn't count the rings.
Speaker 1: I assume they did count the rings, so they said
Speaker 1: the ring They said, Okay, it's a forty year old tree.
Speaker 1: Most of the trees around here forty years old. But
Speaker 1: apparently somebody came and examined the roots and said, oh, no,
Speaker 1: the roots were disturbed about ten years ago where the
Speaker 1: stone was. I don't know how. Okay, I don't know
Speaker 1: how they would have found that out, But some somebody said, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: something was buried here, something big was buried here, like
Speaker 1: ten years ago, disrupting the way that the roots were
Speaker 1: growing or something like that. I could see somebody being
Speaker 1: able to figure that out today with you know, all
Speaker 1: of the computer technology that we have, because I what
Speaker 1: I'm getting I'm understanding this to mean is that some
Speaker 1: yo yo went out to the bottom of that tree
Speaker 1: dug a big ditch or trench pushed the roots out
Speaker 1: of the way through the stone, and then covered it
Speaker 1: back up to make it look like it had been
Speaker 1: there for longer than it had. Okay, that's that's what
Speaker 1: I thought. Man. Roots, It's like a tree branch, you know,
Speaker 1: it takes a long time before it becomes very very
Speaker 1: obvious that somebody has tied it up and it's been
Speaker 1: you know, altered in its growth pattern. Yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I agree with you. I don't know, I totally agree
Speaker 1: with you. I um yeah. And I'm also not not
Speaker 1: so sure that the roots would have survived that long
Speaker 1: because usually when you clear land, you saw that, you
Speaker 1: saw out the wood, you know, and take it home,
Speaker 1: throwing the woodpile or whatever, and then all the all
Speaker 1: the stomps you're throwing a big pile, you burn them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I I absolutely agree with you. There's no
Speaker 1: way that somebody could have unless they examined it on
Speaker 1: the day. This was an affidavit from somebody who for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, examined the roots on the day. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: no way that they would be able to know. This
Speaker 1: also worth mentioning this whole forty year thing. The settlements
Speaker 1: that were in Minnesota in that area at that time,
Speaker 1: they were very new. White people were buying large not
Speaker 1: living there forty years ago, so interesting fact for the era.
Speaker 1: So for somebody to just create this hoax, drop it
Speaker 1: and hope that somebody finds it someday, hounds stone into
Speaker 1: what could be considered hostile herritory and just trying it
Speaker 1: in the ground and then right away, So that's our
Speaker 1: segue into it's not a hoax. We touched on the tree,
Speaker 1: which was kind of one of my first points in
Speaker 1: that it's not a hoax situation, but it can go wherever.
Speaker 1: It's fine. Yeah, we kind of arguing that, yeah, we
Speaker 1: can move away from it. And then the knoll. We
Speaker 1: also talked about that it could have been an island
Speaker 1: almost sorry, the knoll, that the tree with the stone
Speaker 1: underneath it. This is like, right, the sounds like a
Speaker 1: very Lord of the Rings description. I think it's that
Speaker 1: like bog and the frog on the log and the
Speaker 1: bog and of anyways, Uh, it could have been and
Speaker 1: likely was, in fact, an island in the middle of
Speaker 1: swamp way wetland kind of area, assuming as one should,
Speaker 1: that the water table was different in Minnesota six hundred
Speaker 1: years ago because uh the water, the water could have
Speaker 1: been about fifty feet higher than it currently is, which
Speaker 1: would have put water surrounding that knoll. Okay, Does that
Speaker 1: make it anywhere likely that a chunk of sandstone is
Speaker 1: going to be sitting there? Though? I think there are
Speaker 1: two possibilities that it affords. One is that the rock
Speaker 1: was moved by water to this place, right with rising
Speaker 1: and lowering lowering tides. So you think the rock was
Speaker 1: just bobbing in the water and just sort of washed upon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, two hundred pound rocks to float.
Speaker 1: Just science, there are no nautical hazards. No, yeah, they are,
Speaker 1: They totally are. It's that that in h icebergs the
Speaker 1: same thing, right, No, I mean water has been it
Speaker 1: moves things. It's course, it absolutely is. But also that
Speaker 1: it could explain that they could have been camping there,
Speaker 1: that that would have been a place that some people
Speaker 1: would have been camping. They would have ended up there,
Speaker 1: and that's why that stone was there, because they could
Speaker 1: have gotten there with a boat. It also you also
Speaker 1: got to think about it from and explorer's point of view.
Speaker 1: I'm in this body of water, It's an area I
Speaker 1: don't know. There are people who I don't understand who
Speaker 1: potentially are hostile. It's safer to make camp on an island,
Speaker 1: on a high ground, on the high ground rather than
Speaker 1: on the surrounding mainland because it's nobody. It's harder to
Speaker 1: sneak up on you. Almost impossible in fact, to sneak
Speaker 1: up on somebody because you make a lot of noise
Speaker 1: waiting through that. Yeah, and also you can see people
Speaker 1: waiting through them. I mean, you know it's on a
Speaker 1: little canoe or a boat or whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I think a pretty good solid fact for why
Speaker 1: it would be there, except that it just sort of
Speaker 1: happened to be there and they did some carbon out there.
Speaker 1: Is that? Is that the idea? Yeah, it's yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess yeah. Okay. The prayer to marry the Maria that's
Speaker 1: on the stone. People cite this as something that is
Speaker 1: pretty important little bit of history regarding its authenticity. It's
Speaker 1: it's a Catholic prayer, but the Swedes of Minnesota, we're
Speaker 1: all Lutheran pretty much, but for the most part at
Speaker 1: the time, that was the prevalent religion at the turn
Speaker 1: of the century. But way back in the day, the
Speaker 1: turn of the Okay, just making sure I knew which
Speaker 1: centree we were talking about here. So this is the
Speaker 1: turn of the century when the stones, when if it
Speaker 1: were a hoax, when this thing would have been made?
Speaker 1: Because is it the turn of the nineteenth century? Is that?
Speaker 1: Is that the year? Is that the year? I never
Speaker 1: can understand it. I don't even understand why the hell
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century is in because it's the eighteens.
Speaker 1: It totally makes sense. I mean, I get it, but
Speaker 1: it's dumb. It's confusing. The further we get away from
Speaker 1: the first century, the stupider against Yeah. No, but so
Speaker 1: it's But an interesting fact is that Swedes of the
Speaker 1: fourteenth century, their hundreds were Catholic, So it makes sense
Speaker 1: that the prayer that would they would have had would
Speaker 1: have been all all a maria, not that the Lutheran
Speaker 1: version of what that might be, which I think is
Speaker 1: an important fact. I also don't know how much you
Speaker 1: know that as a Swede in the you know, nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: that's fairly sophisticated fake. If it's a fake, yeah should know.
Speaker 1: Oh it happens that these people were a different, totally
Speaker 1: different religion than me. So I'm going to add their
Speaker 1: prayer into my hoax of this thing. That's fairly sophisticated.
Speaker 1: It's not strong, but anyways, I think that's a fair
Speaker 1: thing to mention. What else have we got here on
Speaker 1: your bullet point list of it's not a hoax? I
Speaker 1: love my bullet point list. I love to make fun
Speaker 1: of them, I know you do. Next is that there
Speaker 1: are some scholars who attest to its authenticity. The not
Speaker 1: the linguists as much, but historians. There are some Well,
Speaker 1: I've actually seen some really interesting stuff. So this stone
Speaker 1: has got is it mica that's in the stone? I
Speaker 1: want to say? And they talk about the weathering of
Speaker 1: it when you're you know, when you take a microscope
Speaker 1: to it and you can see how it's weathered. And
Speaker 1: they've actually figured out how much the difference of the
Speaker 1: weathering between the grooves that were cut in the stone
Speaker 1: versus what is on the face, and it's pretty consistent
Speaker 1: with the thirteen sixties some year date that's on, which
Speaker 1: is really compelling. I agree. Again, they're saying that the
Speaker 1: weathering of the ruins, it's consistent with being six years old.
Speaker 1: There's six there's a difference between them. So the face
Speaker 1: that is exposed has completely weathered away. The mica on
Speaker 1: is completely weathered out, but the stuff that's in the
Speaker 1: grooves has about his shows about six hundred years worth
Speaker 1: of weathering. Now, I can't explain how that works, but
Speaker 1: that's what I read, and it was like, wow, well
Speaker 1: that's really scientific. I'm inclined to believe that it sounds science.
Speaker 1: It's probably true. I would have said that he would have.
Speaker 1: Another point that people bring up is the dotted R.
Speaker 1: I hate the dotted R. I like the dotted R.
Speaker 1: Do you know what the dotted R? Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: think they just must took their R for an eye. No.
Speaker 1: So the way that the R run is done, it
Speaker 1: looks like an R pretty much like if you we're
Speaker 1: just going to carve an R in straight lines. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in straight lines. So it's a've got a vertical line.
Speaker 1: You've got from left to right at an approximate degree angle,
Speaker 1: and then from right to left at a mirror of
Speaker 1: that angle back into that vertical line, and then you
Speaker 1: do the same thing to make the tale of the R.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what an R is. An R is that, well,
Speaker 1: there's a dot in the middle in the absence area,
Speaker 1: the negative space, the negative space, thank you, you know,
Speaker 1: art stuff in the negative space on the top bit
Speaker 1: of the art. This is why I always described letters. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: so there's a dot there. And apparently this is a
Speaker 1: thing that only happened really in medieval times, so the hundreds.
Speaker 1: But that could have it could have just been a
Speaker 1: defect in the rock face. It's you can see it
Speaker 1: in all of the rs that are used in the inscription.
Speaker 1: It's not just one little dot and this of it
Speaker 1: because I've only seen one are called out and because
Speaker 1: there's a there's a huge fight over that are, a
Speaker 1: stupidly huge fight and it all all of the images
Speaker 1: that I see are of a single R. I you know,
Speaker 1: when I look at the inscription, I I think I
Speaker 1: see them around. I mean I think I see it
Speaker 1: in all of them. But I could just be that
Speaker 1: could be wishful thinking. Okay, Because because I agree with
Speaker 1: you now that you say, oh, it's always the same are,
Speaker 1: I realized, yeah, that the one that they do the
Speaker 1: close up of is always the same ARE. But I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure when I look at it, it looks like
Speaker 1: there's the dotted ARE and all of it. Because you know,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say it's a single one, because there's
Speaker 1: always the what's that what do they call it? The
Speaker 1: dropped tool theory? Somebody dropped a tool and it just
Speaker 1: happened to strike there and just happened to mar the stone.
Speaker 1: So that's why I'm surprised to hear that there are
Speaker 1: you saw at another place. But you know, I didn't,
Speaker 1: you know what, I didn't really try to scan it
Speaker 1: really well. I was just kind of briefly looking at
Speaker 1: it as as reading the words that I can understand
Speaker 1: English self. Sure, Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I haven't really seen enough good close up photos of
Speaker 1: the runs to really examine them closet problem. That's the
Speaker 1: other thing that's hard with it is it's not as
Speaker 1: though they're taking close ups of, you know, every single
Speaker 1: little bit. It's just the you know, call out the
Speaker 1: one room that has this weird thing going on, or
Speaker 1: as we're about to talk about this one X that's
Speaker 1: really interesting. It's actually all of the x is. But
Speaker 1: this this theory is angle. It's angle theory, sub theory, whatever,
Speaker 1: it's the knights templar angle or the hooked X theory.
Speaker 1: I love it when the Night's get involved. Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1: This this theory posits that the Night Templar, Knights Templar,
Speaker 1: Nights Templar, we're running from something I think religious persecution
Speaker 1: about that time for whatever reason. There's some for some
Speaker 1: reason in the middle of the US um way earlier
Speaker 1: than any other European descendants would have been. There is
Speaker 1: some there's some stories that suggest that the Knights Templar
Speaker 1: they were. There were a substantial amount of them that
Speaker 1: were rounded up in the early hundreds and killed, and
Speaker 1: then the rest of them all disappeared again. This is
Speaker 1: one of those like that. I don't even know. That's
Speaker 1: where the Knights Templar. Knights Templar are so popular because
Speaker 1: there was a mass execution and a mass disappearances they did,
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of theories that suggests that
Speaker 1: they came to America or the New Land and it
Speaker 1: ties into this other unsolved mystery in the United States
Speaker 1: called the Newport Tower, which is in Rhode Island, which
Speaker 1: most people think is a tower that was built, you know,
Speaker 1: after Columbus got here, but some people say was built
Speaker 1: earlier by the Knights Templar. It's I didn't do too
Speaker 1: much research into that. It's probably its own episode, maybe
Speaker 1: someday if we feel like it. But so, but anyway,
Speaker 1: that but the Knights Templar didn't speak Swedish or Norwegian,
Speaker 1: right they some of them did. They wrote in ruins,
Speaker 1: some of them. Yeah, according to this theory, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know any of them personally, so I don't
Speaker 1: know what they wrote and what they didn't write. And
Speaker 1: if you did, you couldn't say. I couldn't wink. There's
Speaker 1: this website that I put up on the research that
Speaker 1: I know, Steve loved. Yeah, if you mean loved equals loathed. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was one of those black background white texts websites.
Speaker 1: I didn't spend a whole lot of time on it,
Speaker 1: but it just I don't know why you did that.
Speaker 1: I thought it was a real source. Okay, that was
Speaker 1: a mistake, Steve. It's always a mistake. Uh. It takes
Speaker 1: aerial photos that they've enhanced of the area surrounding where
Speaker 1: the stone was found, and they say they're carvings in
Speaker 1: the earth and if you just draw these lines, they
Speaker 1: point directly to the temple or the tower in Rhode Island,
Speaker 1: and also all these other places that are totally knights
Speaker 1: templar places. So the stone was actually just like a
Speaker 1: cipher that the Templar Knights left for people. So it's
Speaker 1: actually a coded message. Act. It is an insanely detailed
Speaker 1: encoded message, Like there are numbers and coordinates and degrees
Speaker 1: in all of this stuff buried in it. And I
Speaker 1: was reading through the descriptions and I actually started laughing
Speaker 1: out loud when at one point it said something something, something,
Speaker 1: which is referenced in the room Stone, and I went
Speaker 1: back to their translation and couldn't find that in their translation,
Speaker 1: Like it's a it's a lot of leaps of faith. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe it's a parody. No, no, no, that's a lot
Speaker 1: of work for a parody website, those huge seven pages. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I think that if they were if they arrived in
Speaker 1: America sometime in the fourteenth century, is this the Night's
Speaker 1: Templar fleeing persecution, they really didn't need to go as
Speaker 1: far as as far as Minnesota, because remember, nobody in
Speaker 1: Europe had any idea that America was here. Well that's
Speaker 1: not true, but well yeah, but I means still, they
Speaker 1: could have just chilled on the coast for quite a
Speaker 1: long time. They could have. But you know, maybe they
Speaker 1: were bored. Yeah, you know, maybe they just thought curious,
Speaker 1: or maybe they were driven off of the coast by
Speaker 1: the indigenous people. Yeah, I mean, that's that's the thing,
Speaker 1: is that we've got to remember they weren't the only
Speaker 1: ones there, and being an alien culture, they're going to
Speaker 1: be a pariah. They're gonna be chased away every time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty much, no matter where they go. So this is
Speaker 1: the reason that this is also referred to as the
Speaker 1: hooked X theory is because the X run has a
Speaker 1: very it's a distinct little hook that you apparently only
Speaker 1: see with Knights Templar writing. Oh, I didn't make that connection. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's a distinct style apparent allegedly, I don't. I don't.
Speaker 1: I can't say for certain if that's true or not.
Speaker 1: I guess. The last little interesting bit about the Knights
Speaker 1: Templar is the Scottish prince slash Templar Knight Henry Sinclair
Speaker 1: apparently tried to explore North America in thirteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: So meaning why you got up to a ship and
Speaker 1: attempted to crossover. Yep, it never was heard from again, Yep,
Speaker 1: got it. So that's kind of interesting. That isn't true.
Speaker 1: I don't know why a Scottish prince would write in
Speaker 1: Norse rooms, but okay, sure, yeah, we don't even know
Speaker 1: if you made it to America. Maybe that's what ascribe
Speaker 1: wrote in maybe. So here are my two favorite theories. Well,
Speaker 1: these are the ones that are not it is or
Speaker 1: is not a hope. Well they are kind of well
Speaker 1: under the main bullets. Yes, that I'm making fun of again.
Speaker 1: This one is it's not a hoax, but it was
Speaker 1: carved somewhere else. Well, it's a pretty good theory. It
Speaker 1: is documented that Newfoundland was found by Norse explorers in
Speaker 1: uh year one thousand or something like that. Uh, it
Speaker 1: wasn't explored. I mean, it wasn't settled or anything, but
Speaker 1: they kind of thought, but oh look there's land over there. Cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that they've found some smart effects, haven't they. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have. So it's not impossible. I mean, how it
Speaker 1: would have made its way all the way to Minnesota,
Speaker 1: who knows. But it's not impossible to think that interesting
Speaker 1: journeys had been made back to the New World from
Speaker 1: Scandinavia over the course of the years, and that they
Speaker 1: just happened to leave this stone. Wait, so if I
Speaker 1: understand what you're saying, you're saying that it is a
Speaker 1: stone from their native land that they brought with them
Speaker 1: somehow as a ballast or something. No, I'm saying that
Speaker 1: it would have been carved like on the coast in
Speaker 1: new in Newfoundland, in Newfoundland, Yeah, and then brought over, right,
Speaker 1: So they brought it from their native land. Not necessarily,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't even know, but sandstone possibly is
Speaker 1: indigenous to Newfoundland's I don't know. Somebody go check a
Speaker 1: website because that just seems I mean, other than a
Speaker 1: ballast stone, which I don't know if they used I
Speaker 1: don't know why they would have packed that stupid thing
Speaker 1: all that way. They might have. They might have actually
Speaker 1: had it for a ballast stone. But typically speaking ballast
Speaker 1: and ships, back in those days, the rocks were used
Speaker 1: a lot, but you don't usually use enormous ones like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's my point. Yeah, they take up a lot,
Speaker 1: a lot of space. There's a lot of air gaps,
Speaker 1: and they're really hard to get down below decks without
Speaker 1: breaking your back. And you're in your ship. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: when guy slips and well that chips under yeah, but
Speaker 1: so you know, but I maybe they just got it
Speaker 1: somewhere in Newfoundland and maybe they were actually in places
Speaker 1: other than Newfoundland, not just maybe they actually had other
Speaker 1: parts of North America also, Well, I know that type
Speaker 1: of stone is owned in New England. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: know that it is. It is found in more than
Speaker 1: one place. It's you know, rocks or rocks. Yeahstone is common. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and that that kind of I think they called
Speaker 1: it what a greystone? Is that right Devon? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: greystone is found in a lot of different places. But
Speaker 1: I just don't know, is it do you know if
Speaker 1: it's found in Newfoundland? Yeah, it is. I just just
Speaker 1: to clarify, in Newfoundland is like Northern Canada. It's like
Speaker 1: Eastern Canada, eastern northeastern Canada. Right, I'm just I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to figure out if for the geology. B oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's found all over yeah, so it could have been there.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, so I can I can see it's
Speaker 1: it's carved there and it's like left there, and there's
Speaker 1: certain certain settlers later on find it and they just think,
Speaker 1: you know, if they happen to be Scandinavian and they
Speaker 1: think I've got a great idea. Let's let's ship it
Speaker 1: to the mainland, and I will pass it on to
Speaker 1: other Scandinavians and essentially move it far inland as far
Speaker 1: and known as we can, and and then whom we'll
Speaker 1: bring it to a lot and say, hey, look how
Speaker 1: far the Northman went. It's kind of kind of a
Speaker 1: matter of ethnic pride. Yeah, you know, I can also
Speaker 1: see there being a settlement, you know, in Newfoundland, and
Speaker 1: then as they kind of migrate through, somebody's like, well,
Speaker 1: this is important, we're abandoning this area, so let's take
Speaker 1: it with us, you know. But as as you were saying,
Speaker 1: they found artifacts, and there have been no artifacts found
Speaker 1: except for the stone in this area, so that's pretty
Speaker 1: big issue for me. Yeah. Next theory is it's not
Speaker 1: a hoax, but it's not from thirteen sixty two either.
Speaker 1: I believe this one. It is a historical fact that
Speaker 1: ten Norwegian settlers were killed pretty close to the spot
Speaker 1: where that stone was found as part of the Sioux Wars.
Speaker 1: About this, the Sioux Wars that happened in eighteen sixty two. Vaguely,
Speaker 1: that's that that actually makes a lot of sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for me, that was kind of. I read that and
Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, that's an AHA moment for me
Speaker 1: that it happened close by. You know, there weren't officially
Speaker 1: a lot of white people living around in that area,
Speaker 1: but likely there were some, given that some white people
Speaker 1: died in that area at that time. The carbon the
Speaker 1: numbers match up pretty well. You know, it could be
Speaker 1: that it's the typo essentially, is what this all boils
Speaker 1: down to, Either a typo or maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: of erosion, Yeah, something like that, And that it was
Speaker 1: left there as the marker for their fallen comrades. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense got buried. It would have been there
Speaker 1: forty years, which would fall in line with the whole
Speaker 1: tree root thing. Yeah, I guess that's what thirty six years.
Speaker 1: It would explain the weird grammar stuff that's going on right,
Speaker 1: that it was a mix, because it would have been
Speaker 1: it wasn't a thing that continued to happen. They're like
Speaker 1: carving of ruin stones. Run stones were used as like
Speaker 1: headstones and markers of important events. So it would have
Speaker 1: been something that somebody would have harved as a tribute
Speaker 1: and that they would have probably tried to be hearkening
Speaker 1: on the traditions of old but probably not knowing enough
Speaker 1: to do it accurately. Well yeah, well, I mean a
Speaker 1: lot of people were not that well educated. There were
Speaker 1: lots of people who could read and sort of read
Speaker 1: and write, but lots of bad grammar and spelling and stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's I would say, it's similar to people
Speaker 1: trying to do Old English today. You know, for me,
Speaker 1: I've seen those tattoos. Yeah, I mean everybody has, and
Speaker 1: it's it's not good old English, but it kind of
Speaker 1: looks like old English, And I don't know. For me,
Speaker 1: that's it. That's my I'm done. That's my theory. Okay,
Speaker 1: like microphone drop right now, don't drop the mic, please canace.
Speaker 1: But no, I think that's a really solid theory. I
Speaker 1: think that really explains it all pretty well. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think so too. Yeah, I'm with you. Look at that
Speaker 1: wrap up, Steve, not convinced. I'm still not convinced. Why not, West,
Speaker 1: what's not convincing you? Because if if it's a simple
Speaker 1: typo of the three should have been an eight, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a big typo. Oh. No, they're not like number
Speaker 1: like English numbers. They're yeah, not Arabic numerals. There their
Speaker 1: room numbers, so they're actually ruins. There's no like Arabic
Speaker 1: numerals on there. Uh. And as it turns out, I
Speaker 1: can show you a picture if you would like. But
Speaker 1: three and eight they're like almost exactly like it's like
Speaker 1: the it's it looks kind of like seriously, yeah, it
Speaker 1: looks kind of like the P right. But so the
Speaker 1: three the protrusion, I guess it looks like yeah, the
Speaker 1: flag is half mass yeah, and the on the the
Speaker 1: eight it's full mast. Yeah, it's like they've moved it.
Speaker 1: It's like they just moved it down about ten percent
Speaker 1: of the distance. You know, it's like our of the distance,
Speaker 1: it's not even half very small. Okay, yeah, I'm I'm done.
Speaker 1: Microphone drop boom. So yeah, I think we solve this one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: would yeah, we agree, we're in total agreement. Wow. Well
Speaker 1: I'm actually just hot and tired. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you
Speaker 1: can find some of our links on our website Thinking
Speaker 1: Sideways podcast dot com. You can leave us a comment
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Speaker 1: I'm catching up. Yeah, No, I mean I regret you
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Speaker 1: There's a little video explaining everything how the monetary system work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that is totally optional, of course, totally totally option.
Speaker 1: Absolutely Yeah. I don't wan anybody feeling like they have
Speaker 1: to do that, not at all. But after Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: well yeah, Donald actually has to I'm looking for him. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: So that all having been said, I think we're going
Speaker 1: to scoot on out of here, hopefully to someplace cooler.
Speaker 1: That's rocket. We'll see you all next week, by everybody.
Speaker 1: God bye, guys,