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Danish Expert Declares Vinland Map Genuine
MBCook writes "A Danish conservation expert named Rene Larsen has finished a 5-year study of the infamous Vinland Map and declared it genuine. 'All the tests that we have done over the past five years — on the materials and other aspects — do not show any signs of forgery,' he said at the press conference. He and his team studied the ink, the paper, and even insect damage. They believe that the ink, which was discovered in 1972 to contain titanium dioxide and thus supposedly was too new for the map to be genuine, was contaminated when sand was used to dry the ink."
The edges arent slightly burnt and you dont roll it out to read it and c'mon, where's the X?
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Now in the Americas they should all speak Danish and not Italian!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
actually, this is rather interesting. if it's genuine, what does that tell of this "vinland"? maybe i've got it wrong, but it's written as if it's in the middle of the ocean. suppose it's like atlantis and sunk to the bottom of the sea?
The experts name is most probable not Rene Larson but René Larsen. As a Dane living in the UK, having a surname ending with sen, I'm proper fed up with having to spell my surname to everyone taking my name down. To me Larsen sounds Danish and Larson sounds Swedish. Sorry for rambling.
You forgot to mention how he obtained it from the Thule Society.
Aside from being generally suspicious of a person anonymously bashing a guy on /., your inability to get even basic facts straight makes me skeptical of your arguments. The map's prominence dates to 1965, after the initial authentication work was completed; prior to that point virtually no one knew of it, so there would be no story of his fame, and definitely no nationwide headlines. Mods, please drop this guy to oblivion.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
I remember some years ago learning about a Viking who were one of the first to visit Greenland (I do not recall who). It was written "en passant" in one of the sagas that he had reported back in Island that curiously enough if you stab an Inuit with a sword he just keeps on bleeding (due to the extreme cold Inuits are genetically adapted to have blood that does not coagulate easily).
And who says that these Vikings were brutal warriors and not peaceful traders?
Is it just me or does Vinland seem as if it became Finland...in name only of course. :D
Zoom in on the actual southern coast of England. It looks like a hastily drawn zigzag. England must be fake.
In all seriousness, if authentic, the map predates the effective computation of longitude. You notice how the East/West elements of the map are stretched and skewed, far more than the North/South elements? You try accurately illustrating a fairly complex coastline when you can't say where you are on the East/West axis except by dead reckoning.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
It reminds me of a problem my mum told me about in the art world: Verifying the authenticity of ancient scrolls has become virtually impossible due to the discovery of large quantities of paint supplies (dried ink especially) and paper in monasteries. Armed with "old materials", forgers only have to focus on getting the technique, etc. right since there is no means to catch them technologically; for example, carbon dating and similar techniques will give the "right" results. Thus, art historians and dealers in that field allegedly have to rely more and more on their eyes to spot bad technique...
It would not surprise me if the Vinland map could have been constructed under similar circumstances (if that is what someone intended to do). I'm sure someone somewhere could have scared up some old ink and a hide to paint it on. It is or this reason that I guess so many folk are skeptical of the repeated maps from around the world that have come out "discovering" the Americas...
Note: the map predates the *known* effective computation of longitude. The Vikings could probably do it. Of course, they didn't try to sail across the middle like some impulsive Italian trader apparently did without thinking in advance: "hmm. maybe hitting islands along the way that I know about would be easier."
stuff |
Oh, I forgot: What when it just was created as a fantasy map, back it those very old times? Like for a cult, where Vinland was some holy place. Very unlikely, yes. But hey, who knows...
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Come on, when it's not in Debian Stable, it's a beta, even kids know that. :-)
Ezekiel 23:20
You're saying the Vikings managed to develop clocks that could work at sea, didn't tell anyone, and then forgot about it for 500 years? Because prior to GPS, that was *still* the only way to get an accurate reading on longitude. Yes, there are other methods, but they don't work at sea, they only work at the time of known planetary events, and they are crude even when used correctly (far too crude to provide the resolution needed for detailed coastlines).
And yet somehow, the Vikings could "probably" do it. With no supporting evidence whatsoever, you leap to "probably." Wow... Just wow...
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Look at those large islands to the west of the Canaries. They're labelled Magnae Insulae Beati Brandani Branziliae Dictae: St Brandon's Large Islands, Called The Branzillas. Branzillas? Nobody used -zilla to mean "large" before Godzilla, and it didn't become really popular until Mozilla. The whole thing is clearly a forgery by some 21st-century geek, probably a Terry Gilliam fan, trying to mock up a folk etymology of the name "Brazil". ;)
Peter
Note: the map predates the *known* effective computation of longitude. The Vikings could probably do it. Of course, they didn't try to sail across the middle like some impulsive Italian trader apparently did without thinking in advance: "hmm. maybe hitting islands along the way that I know about would be easier."
You are under the impression that Columbus was acting on impulse? He didn't just happen to have three well supplied ships and crew.
The Turkish empire was in control of the land route to India and China, and the Portuguese seemed in control of any eastern route around Africa. Like astronomers and scientists did at the time, Columbus knew the earth was round, and knew he could get to 'India' via the western route. He tried to sell this idea to investors in various places, until he found the queen of Spain willing to finance an expedition.
He did underestimate the size of the Earth and thus the length of his journey, even though Eratosthenes had calculated it to reasonable accuracy more than 17 centuries earlier. Going through the middle is simply the shortest route by sail, following the prevailing wind.
I'm not claiming that the Vikings actually pulled this off, but there were accurate celestial clocks available in antiquity. Gavin Menzies described the method in his book about early Chinese exploration, 1421. Off topic, but this is how it works:
0. Develop the ability to predict lunar eclipses.
1. Draw a crappy map using the stars to determine your latitude and speed over water to determine your longitude.
2. Build and staff celestial observatories along the coast at intervals.
3. Note the star that transits directly overhead each observatory at agreed-upon events of a predicted lunar eclipse.
4. Collect all the observations, and note the difference in angle (longitude) between the transiting stars.
5. Interpolate the longitude of the points between the observatories to update your crappy map.
I don't know. I'm looking at some of those pixels and they don't look quite right. I've also seen a few shops in my day.
Columbus wasn't Italian. He's probably referring to Amerigo Vespucci or someone.
Eh? There was no nation of Italy at the time, but Columbus came from the area now known as Italy, as did Vespucci.
Gavin Menzies described the method in his book about early Chinese exploration, 1421.
Ah, yes, because that's certainly a book I'd want to trust about, well, anything.
Some historians note that Colombus spent a lot of time in the libraries of the Order of Calatrava, a Spanish knights order. When the Order of the Temple was dissolved, many Templars of the Iberian Peninsula joined the Order of Calatrava (and the Order of Alcantara, too).
At the peak or their power, the Templars were known to have "de l'argent", which nowadays in French means money but at that time may have meant simply "silver". And silver was rather rare in Europe (and even rarer in Middle East, where in some place it was more precious than gold), the German mines hadn't been discovered yet. But silver mines were already exploited in North America. Add to this the fact that six main Templar Roads (networks of pathways protected by Templars) led to La Rochelle for unknown reasons, some historians speculate that maybe the Templars had settlements or commercial counters in the Americas.
I know, this is starting to sound crazy. Let me tell you I don't believe these theories. I just find them worth some thought, or some dreaming (I'm not an historian so I don't need to be rational about this). Even crazier-sounding is the theory that the Templars found America thanks to old Irish tales, notably the Ulster Cycle, with its mention of Cù Chulainn's travel to Tìr na nÒg, which may have been America. Some even go as far as to point the similarity between "Cù Chulainn" and "Kukulkàn", one of the names of the deity better known as Quetzalcoatl. As far as I know, no satisfactory explanation has been found for the south-Americans' welcoming of Europeans, who went as far as treating them like gods. The theory of a previous, unrecorded contact has never been invalidated. Add to this an inch of evhemerism and maybe...
All this to say that I agree, there are plenty of clues that Colombus knew there was a reachable land ahead of him. He didn't know what it was, but he most likely knew that it was there.
There's nothing like $HOME
You do not need a clock, you need a piece of string, it is described in passing in the Sagas
Wonderful how modern humans demand mechanical contraptions where there forefathers used logic and elementary math
And the Templars somehow did this without spreading smallpox to the natives or leaving any tangible evidence of European mining technology or metalwork?I am highly skeptical.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
His not? Ive always herd he was, adn wikipedia has this: "It is generally, although not universally, agreed that Christopher Columbus was born between 25 August and 31 October 1451 in Genoa, part of modern Italy."
www.aleo.no
Zoom in on the actual southern coast of England. It looks like a hastily drawn zigzag. England must be fake.
In all seriousness, if authentic, the map predates the effective computation of longitude. You notice how the East/West elements of the map are stretched and skewed, far more than the North/South elements? You try accurately illustrating a fairly complex coastline when you can't say where you are on the East/West axis except by dead reckoning.
Actually, this provides some of the best evidence against it being authentic (ok, solely in my opinion.)
The reason why? Everything in Europe is distorted incredibly, however Greenland is about 90% accurate. So, either the Vikings never bothered to measure their own peninsula, or Britain properly, yet totally managed to survey Greenland with nearly modern accuracy... or, it's likely a fake.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Columbus was from Genoa (probably), which was an Italian city-state. So he almost certainly was Italian.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
While Genoa is Columbus' most likely birthplace, we are not certain of it. You are as wrong affirming that he came from Italy as the grandparent was by saying that he wasn't.
The Vinland map is a classic case of well-funded idiots who can't consider all the data.
Yes, the parchment is authentic. Yes, most of the map is authentic. No, there is no way in Hell the "Vinland" section is.
The rest of the map illustrates the travelogue (of journeys to the East) contained in the same codex. It's entirely consistent with the material in the book, with contemporary maps, and with what one would expect. It ain't a perfect representation, but more a spatial arrangement that coheres with the text. In other words, it's what you'd get if you took the book and sketched out a map from it.
The "Vinland" section is crammed into the left, and is laughably realistic: there's no medieval text from which you could construct a similar map. Hell, nobody circumnavigated Greenland until much later. Moreover, the saga of Erik the Red was not exactly a medieval best seller. It survived in a couple manuscripts, and Norse was not a language that the scribe of the map would have known. The codex, content and hand are all consistent with a scribe around Basel, if I recall correctly
So all this nonsense about carbon dating is beside the point. You can argue the ink composition all you want, but every single linguistic, codicological, paleographical and cultural historical indicator points to this being an obvious and bad fake.
And get off my lawn.
But they spell it a little different.
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=vineland
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
I thought the expression 'brazillian' didn't become popular (and therefore used on a map) before it meant 'an enormous amount of money', as in 'I've just earned a Brazillion dollars' or something.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Carbon dating any plastic material would probably result in a very old age. Carbon-14 is produced by cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere. Any material that's produced from petroleum, such as plastics and solvents, is depleted of carbon-14, because it comes from oil that was buried for millions of years.
The same is true for coal. Mix rock coal in a black pigment that's normally made with charcoal and it will appear to be much older.
As for the map, there really wasn't any need for physical analysis of it to know that it cannot be genuine, as it contains information that was unknowable in the 15th century. According to the wikipedia page, the writing on the map also contains anachronisms. Did someone take a genuine map and add Japan, Australia and Newfoundland, or was it a complete forgery from the ground up?
Information that was unknowable? What information?
If you'd bother to look at the map which is part of the Wikipedia article linked in this article, you'd see, there is no Australia on that map. As far as Japan. Japan was certainly known. You know from the Silk road trade routes with China and the spice routes that existed back into antiquity. You know those primitives like the Greeks and Romans and earlier civilizations that all had trade with China. Ever heard of Marco Polo (1254-1324), who lived in the 13th and 14th centuries? He went to China and knew of Japan. Japan was written about as early as his visit and his story was widely and wildly popular in Europe. So to say it was unknowable that Japan existed is the exact opposite of what is true. It would have been almost impossible to NOT know about Japan in the 15th century. I see nothing on the map that was unknowable in the 15th century.
I guess this is part of the reason why you are NOT an expert on ancient maps and forgeries. Although, the first thing that I thought of was, maybe someone added Vinland to a genuine 15th century map. I'm no expert, but if I were that'd be on the things I'd spend five years trying to (dis/)prove.
From http://www.physorg.com/news91798327.html "Viking navigation hypothesis under foggy and cloudy skies requires more light" This article speaks of the Viking sun-dial for sunny days and a less-known sunstone for the foggy ones. Interesting theory, if anything.
The more you know, the less you need. [Admin added: from me.]
As a Norwegian I am embarassed by those of my countrymen that routinely describe "Leif Eiriksson" and "Snorre Sturlason" - Snorri was his name, and he was Sturluson - as Norwegians. They were both so Icelandic, although Leifur went to Greenland along with his father and might also be called a Greenlander,,, Snorri's writings are very important to us, too important to want to claim him for our own - especially since he was murdered by order of the then King of Norway. Wet ops even then. Sorry, Iceland.
What -- me worry?
No, he was Genuese. There wasn't an Italy.
That requires that you have a bunch of established outposts. That's not possible when you're on a voyage of exploration and for well populated areas regular surveying or even pacing off distances sounds like it would be a whole lot easier and probably more accurate.
He didn't underestimate it, he purposely faked his calculations. As you say, the actual circumference had been known for a long time, and it was the principle objection to his plan. Somehow he talked the queen into believing his numbers as opposed to everyone else's.
Ooooh, nice one, I hadn't thought of the epidemiological objection. This tale has indeed plenty of holes. It doesn't include that the templars themselves mined silver, though (the natives did), so that part of your objection is moot. But yeah, it's very fragile. Nice, but fragile.
Honestly, I prefer Neil Gaiman's postulate for his novel American Gods: just about every populations who had access to the Atlantic ocean has had members who crossed it at one time or another, most of the time accidentally. Not as pretty than the previous tale, but pretty enough, and rather likely at that.
There's nothing like $HOME
All isotope based dating techniques are based on natural decay... whether something is painted or not, I doubt the paint will have any effect on the amount of Carbon-14 you'll find inside it... According to howstuffworks (for what that is worth), carbon-14 is made by cosmic rays, and the ratio of carbon14 to carbon-12 was traditionally pretty stable. Since carbon 14 has a half life of 5,700 years, you can look at the ratio of the two to determine how old something is (well, for the last 60,000 years or so). That's because once there is no more carbon-14 uptake from the atmosphere, the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon 12 will decline (i.e. the plant/animal died)... which brings up another good point, i.e. what pigments were used, what they were derived from.
Also of interest is how carbon-dating in the future will become more difficult due to the advent of atmospheric atom bomb tests and other nuke industry emissions.
Lastly, whether the map of Vinland is authentic or not is for someone else to decide. However, I doubt anyone quibbles with the idea that plenty of humans inhabited the Americas well before other folk documented shorelines, etc. when they "discovered" the North and South American continents. For me, too many of these document-authenticity quests take on a quasi-nationalistic tint, i.e. "my grandpa was braver/wiser/better than your grandpa". Cheers.
No offence but he has a point, you don't make a point by citing a crackpot.
You just got troll'd!
Thanks for pointing out mistakes in his explanation. This allows other readers to see his statement in another light. But why "mod him to oblivion"? He offers a remarkable story. Why should others not be able to judge for themselves (taking into account your own comment)?
Why should others not be able to judge for themselves (taking into account your own comment)?
We can, but now those of us reading at +3 or so don't have to wade through the made up stuff before seeing the rebuttal. Now we get to see the high-modded rebuttal, and if we think the story being rebutted sounds interesting, we are perfectly free to go look at it.
So it isn't clear why you are talking about "others not be[ing] able to judge for themselves". What exactly do you think is making us UNABLE to read and judge the story for ourselves, given that down-modding does not in any way prevent us from reading the story, which we are all aware of now because of the high-modded rebuttal?
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
You're splitting hairs, Genoa is part of modern Italy.
Dollars? No, it's men. As in the joke:
Rumsfeld is giving Dubya the daily briefing on Iraq. "And, I'm sad to say, Mr President, that two Brazilian men were killed yesterday by IEDs." Bush turns white, his jaw drops open, and he freezes as though catatonic. After two minutes he stammers, "That's, that's terr-terrible. How, how, how many is a Brazilian?"
Yes, and those who RTFA will note several mentions of *wormholes*. WTF, they knew about wormholes back then??? Or is that how the Vikings arrived on our planet? Ponderous.
What is far more interesting to me about the Vinland map than the inclusion of "vinland" is the rather large island directly west of the the Strait of Gibraltar, exactly coinciding with Plato's description of the position of Atlantis.
Authenticity is not a hidden property. A piece of art is either authentic or not, and the authenticity is based in as much documentary evidence as you can possibly gather.
Authenticity is neither imaginary. Either the person claiming to have painted something did, or did not do it, . That is not an imaginary contraption, it is a matter of fact which may or may not be possible to verify.
Although your bizarre point of view may have some merit in a pure philosophical sense, back on earth, in the real world, people value what is scarce, and there are few things as scarce as the produce of talented *and* original people.
You don't like it? Don't buy the real thing, buy the forgeries, the forgers still have no right to claim as theirs the work of people that can actually come with original ideas. Such practice is simply immoral any way you want to slice it.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Wishing stupid things is anyone's prerogative, the real world has this nasty habit of behave in ways that don;t conform with our wishes specially if they are bizarre and devoid of any logic.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
That you are claiming that a nonsensical situation would be desirable.
Since we humans can record our achievements we pay homage to people that are original and talented, your comments wish for a situation that is simply against human nature: we prefer innovators to imitators.
If you are going to defend a situation that goes counter all what we humans naturally understand as more valuable you surely don't expect to get a free pass from other people reading your nonsense.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Poor sod...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Italy is a modern state born in the 19th century.
People back in the time of Columbus would have not understood what that Italy of ours is, if you could tell Columbus that he is Italian he would not know what the heck you would be talking about.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Stop. Really. Stop...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
But thanks for playing, nice troll.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
One history is as good as another.
And that isn't irrational, how? "I'm trying to sell someone on a deal, the only problem is, the trip is about 3 times longer than anyone is willing to risk on a blue-water venture. I know! I'll lie about it, and as long as we get lucky, it'll all work out!" Fortunately for him, he was lucky. Hit a few islands, got to resupply, found some people with skin a different color than his and called them Indians.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
He didn't underestimate it, he purposely faked his calculations. As you say, the actual circumference had been known for a long time, and it was the principle objection to his plan. Somehow he talked the queen into believing his numbers as opposed to everyone else's.
He did underestimate it quite a bit. He happened to find another continent at roughly the longitude where he expected China to be.
I have heard of this debate before, but there's no reason a water clock or sand clock couldn't have worked at sea if it's designed to be hung from the ceiling and permitted to swing. With materials such as bags (tanned animal stomachs), wax, metal, clay pots, and string it could been installed as a fixture in a boat. If that's not good enough, you could also make wax candles and size them to burn down on 12 or 24 hour increments. Just make the wax candle in a clay pot and hang it from a fixed point so it can swing and burn evenly. Burn multiple candles to average out errors due to small differences in sizing and flammability. You could also do something similar to this by measuring water evaporation. How about evaporating linseed oil? Not as fined grained, but they could tell you if your other clocks are way off and by how much. These combined with occasional high noon measurements (on calm, windless days) could have provided close enough accuracy to navigate and locate larger land masses.
You could periodically resynchronize your "clocks" because along the route there are a number of islands: Shetland, Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland. Stopping and making camp would have given them a means to use land based clocks to calculate longitude. So, using a less accurate method could have gotten them to the island where they'd have a chance to reset their clocks to an accurate setting again.
If your "clocks" are somewhat unreliable, the solution is to employ multiple methods in parallel to reduce your error rates. This could have been done but I think historians are too piggish to accept it.
Camping on quad since 1996.
Anyway, America was named before Columbus for Richard Amerike, a Bristol trader who had a fishing fleet that went to Newfoundland waters for Cod.
Insightful. This explains why the Americas were often labeled as 'Bristolia' on older maps, and it explains the fact that sheep shagging jokes existed among native American tribes, decades before the arrival of the first sheep.
Somehow he talked the queen into believing his numbers as opposed to everyone else's.
He was willing to sail around the world based on your confidence in your numbers (which is wrong will likely result in your starving to death at sea). Now, he was wrong, and we have the benefit of hindsight and better information, but without such knowledge, you'd have to agree that the argument is quite compelling.
It's irrational all right. It also seems to be rather common.
Wasn't there just a story about how Ares is not only late and over budget but it likely has some unfortunate crew-killing properties as well?
Cooking your budget numbers seems to be standard practice, and it's not that big a step to cooking your safety predictions too. Columbus took it a step further and climbed on the boat himself, but other than that he was just a modern contractor bidding for a government contract.
I'm not sure what's compelling about the argument. Apparently Columbus himself was quite convincing, but not his arguments. If you went to NASA and told them they're overbuilding everything, Mars is only half as far away as they think, would you consider that compelling?
If the person making the argument showed that at least some respectable scientists agreed with him and he was willing to fund and go on the mission himself I would.
Okay, but the analogy is with Columbus who (a) didn't have anybody respectable or otherwise who agreed with him and (b) was begging for someone else to fund his expedition. He was willing to go himself. One out of three ain't bad, hey?
Columbus didn't just pull the figure out of his ass. It was an estimate based on maps and guesswork, but many cartographers accepted the figures.
Okay - just about any astronomical based measurement would have been considerably more accurate, and I'll accept that most scientists of the time would have gone with that figure, but then I'll counter that convincing the queen would have been more akin to convincing politicians than convincing NASA, and we all know how they're often quite happy to accept whatever scientific evidence supports their own word view.
No, no, no. The Egyptian gods came here by wormhole. Thor, the Supreme Commander of the Asgard Fleet, came here by ship. Sheesh.
"...history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest." --Ghandi
The Kensington Runestone is almost certainly authentic, for one simple reason. It includes runes that at the time of its discovery were not in any known runic dictionary, which is one major reason it was considered a fake at the time of its discovery by linguistic experts, but decades later were found to be authentic runes. A pretty neat trick for a purported 19th century hoaxer, no? Whoever wrote the Wikipedia entry should probably have a chat with Alice Beck Kehoe of the Univesity of Wisconsin, as she thoroughly deals with all the arguments raised there while providing substantial unanswered evidence for authenticity. I note that her key text on the topic "The Kensington Runestone: Approaching a Research Question Holistically" is not cited in the Wiki entry. Unfortunately, this is what you get when you rely on Wikipedia as a sole source.
Awesome.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
The V does smell rather strongly doesn't it?
This is what happens when you read an exciting book about an epic adventure that you desperately want to be true.
Dr. Kehoe writes that Kensington is fourteen days journey from Lake Superior (easily reached from Newfoundland via the St. Lawrence River), and Hudson's Bay, via Winnipeg and Canadian rivers. However, both routes would require porting a ship over land for tens of miles at several points. sailing a boat up the extremely violent Niagara river, let alone the falls, is obviously out of the question. Hiking over land would take a lot more than 14 days, even disregarding the nagging question what motivation men in such a situation would have for venturing hundreds of miles inland. This last question is very difficult get past occam's razor, especially compared to the great simplicity of the alternative options: a forgery, or a genuine stone found somewhere around the baltic and transported to Minnesota in the 19th century.
Yeah, pretty much everything about that post was false (just like the Vinland Map), starting with the guy's name! In light of the renewed interest in the Map, I've now put a page about Laurence Witten [not Lawrence, not Whitten] on Wikipedia.
If you think that "The Kensington Runestone: Approaching A Research Question Holistically", with its chapters on geology, archaeology, linguistics, and biology is "an exciting book about an epic adventure"... either you've never read the book, or you've already decided what you want to be true. Apparently, you don't even know what conclusion Kehoe comes to. Either way, you've pretty clearly invalidated your qualifications to comment. Look, the stone includes runes that appeared in no dictionary at the time, and this was taken as contemporary proof that it was a bad fake. Those runes were later found to be genuine by further research. How do you explain the presence of genuine runes unknown at the time if its a forgery? And why do you find the fabricated-after-the-fact, unsupported by any evidence fabulation that the stone was transported from Minnesota more plausible than the simplest explanation? Unless you can come up with a credible theory of who transported it, how, when, and for what gain, and how it came to be buried and then found... you've got nothing other than, to borrow a phrase, an epic adventure that you desperately want to be true. For the record, I have no desire, desperate or otherwise, for this to be true or false. I have no historical, ethnic or other attachment to the story. I simply looked at the evidence, and it's obvious which side of the argument is ignoring the evidence it doesn't like...
Scandinavians in the 19th century didn't rely on dictionaries for writing runes; it wasn't a lost skill at the time.
How is it 'simplest' to assume that 15th century Scandinavian explorers traveled hundreds of miles inland on an unfamiliar continent, frequently having to port their ship many miles overland across considerable differences in elevation, and that after being ambushed, they took a day or so to carve an elaborate inscription on a stone, that happened to be politically apropos 5 centuries later?