Linguistics


		Linguistics

	It strikes this writer as a supreme irony that, from the very start of the rune stone saga, it has been the runeologists and linguists who time after time have risen up in outrage proclaiming the stone a hoax because of some character or feature that they, in their present state of knowledge, had never seen before. And time after time, those features were discovered on stones in Europe or on documents, completely eliminating the basis for their accusations of fraud. One cannot help but wonder why the public continues to give any credence at all to this clique of “scholars” who have for generations been the captives of their own closed-loop thinking. Closed loop in that, “Columbus is first because no-one was here before him,” and it can’t be pre-Columbian but he was here first.” And the rune stone is not the only artifact that has been condemned as a hoax by the linguists in a fashion that would make the Salem witch trials seem just and fair. The Spirit Pond Stones, the Narragansett Rune Stone and the Bat Creek Stone all received similar treatment from the runologists and all are now widely seen as authentic. So, dear reader, with that as background we want to take you on brief tour of the history of linguistics and the Kensington Rune Stone. We can’t go into great depth here, your eyes would glaze over if we did. And we strongly suggest you read “Kensington Rune Stone: Compelling New Evidence” by Wolter and Nielsen for more depth. Here though, are the principal reasons why the stone can now be deemed of medieval origin based on the runes alone.


	*The Dotted R*

Perhaps the greatest irony of the runeologists’ generation after generation attack on the authenticity of the stone is that several of their claims to unknown runes which “proved” a hoax, have become the best linguistic evidence for the stone’s medieval origin. Chief among these is the “Dotted R.” For decades after the discovery of the rune stone, linguists argued that it was a hoax because they had never seen the dotted R, and they believed the palatal r sound was gone from Scandinavian language at least by 1100.

But during the 1930s, it had been discovered that the palatal r sound had been in use in Gotland (a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea) as late as the mid 1300s. Soon after, two dooted R runes were found in inscriptions, one on Gotland and one in southern Sweden. This was 40 years after the Kensington Rune Stone was found, and after the death of Olof Ohman. No-one in Kensington, Minnesota could possibly have known about the dotted R, nor could any possible forger from earlier years. The dotted R, however, “was” appropriate for the date on the stone, 1362. The presence of several dotted Rs on the rune stone are, in themselves, conclusive evidence of the stone’s authenticity.

The Easter Table Dating Code