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Kensington Rune Stone This subject used to fascinate me when I was 9 or 11. I read everything the late Hjalmar Holand ever wrote. It has fascinated many others, unfortunately mainly “professional Scandinavians” who have made their lives out of their ethnicity, especially as professors of that language or culture. Most have used it only as a way to get a cheap Ph.D. thesis by demolishing it once again, or by using its possible validity to back up some ulterior theory or hobby-horse they may have. Few if any mainstream observers of American antiquities have been willing to touch it. ...

A team of researchers working in Hungary has proposed that a sun compass artifact found in a convent in 1948 might have been used in conjunction with crystals to allow Vikings to guide their boats even at night. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical & Engineering Sciences, the team describes theories they've developed that might explain how Viking sailors were able to so accurately sail to places such as Greenland. Since the discovery of the sun compass fragment, researchers have theorized that Viking sailors used them to plot their course—at least when the...

A rough, whitish block recovered from an Elizabethan shipwreck may be a sunstone, the fabled crystal believed by some to have helped Vikings and other medieval seafarers navigate the high seas, researchers say. In a paper published earlier this week, a Franco-British group argued that the Alderney Crystal—a chunk of Icelandic calcite found amid a 16th century wreck at the bottom of the English Channel—worked as a kind of solar compass, allowing sailors to determine the position of the sun even when it was hidden by heavy cloud, masked by fog, or below the horizon. That's because of a property...

'Sunstone' crystals may have helped seafarers to find the Sun on cloudy days. A Viking legend tells of a glowing 'sunstone' that, when held up to the sky, revealed the position of the Sun even on a cloudy day. It sounds like magic, but scientists measuring the properties of light in the sky say that polarizing crystals — which function in the same way as the mythical sunstone — could have helped ancient sailors to cross the northern Atlantic. A review of their evidence is published today in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B1. The Vikings, seafarers from Scandinavia...

The most popular and very believable account is that the island was named by the British explorer Bartholomew Gosnold, after his infant daughter -- Martha... He would take short sails to "the big island" (Martha's Vineyard) for the purpose of gathering sassafras root, to be hauled back to England for medicinal use. Gosnold was only on Cuttyhunk about six weeks because of a small skirmish with the Wampanoags... the British wisely withdrew from the Islands before winter. Before leaving, however, it's believed that Gosnold named the big island after his infant daughter, Martha... Another, not as popular version of the...

1/20/05Danish Archaeologists in Search of Vikings in Iran Tehran, Jan. 20 (Iranian Cultural Heritage News Agency) – Researchers from the Copenhagen Museum in Denmark have traveled to the coasts of the Caspian Sea, northern Iran, in search of clues of relationships between Iranians and Vikings. A few years ago, a researcher from the Copenhagen Museum, Nadia Haupt, discovered more than one thousand coins and relics that did not belong to the Danish or other Scandinavian cultures, and therefore set to find out more about the historical roots of the Danish civilization. The ancient items that took the attention of experts...

LONDON (AP) -- Archaeologists in northwestern England have found a burial site of six Viking men and women, complete with swords, spears, jewelry, fire-making materials and riding equipment, officials said Monday. The site, discovered near Cumwhitton, is believed to date to the early 10th century, and archaeologists working there called it the first Viking burial ground found in Britain. The only other known Viking cemetery was found in Ingleby east of Cumwhitton. It was excavated in the 1940s, but the bodies had been cremated and not buried. Local metal specialist Peter Adams made the find at the end of March...

One of the oldest breeds of cats in North America is the Maine Coon Cat, and some say 40% of the originals had extra toes. One article said it evolved as a "snowshoe foot" to help these cats walk in the snow. Cute story, but probably [expletive deleted] ...The breed closest to the Maine Coon Cat is the Norwegian Forest Cat which evolved in the same climate and lends credence to one theory that ancestors of the Coon Cat may have even come to the New World onboard Viking ships. I like that theory best.

Cue the backlash!Following this morning's history-making Supreme Court Decision on marriage equality, Vikings cornerback Josh Robinson took to Twitter to condemn gay marriage in a series of homophobic tweets. He event compared marriage equality to incest and pedophilia."Love is love? So what will we say when the 30yr old loves YOUR 10 year old. When the dad loves HIS 6 year old? It's different? Yea okay!" the 24-year-old football star wrote Friday. "The day one person makes that stand, some may support, but many will say that's sick! That day I will say ‘hypocrites.'""When did we start defining a word...

Viking Farms Tell Cautionary Climate Tale Boundary walls built by Iceland's Viking farmers run through Unnsteinn Ingason's land. At some point, farmers stopped repairing the walls, and a climate change may help explain why. Ingason's land had been farmed for hundreds of years prior to his family's ownership. Here, ruins of a stone farm house with a turf roof on a hill behind Ingason's home. Archaeologist Adolf Fridriksson stands near the ruins of an early Viking farm. The farm was long ago abandoned, and its soil heavily eroded. Icelandic farmers bring their sheep down from the hills for the winter....

TREASURE dating back to the time of the Vikings has been found in a Bridlington field. The Viking finger ring has a silver content of 98% which, combined with its age, meets the criteria for it to be officially classed as treasure. The ring, found by Paul Rennoldson, has been sent to the British Museum in London where it will be valued. Alan Worth, chairman of the Bridlington Metal Detecting Society, said finding any items dating back to the Viking age was very rare. "The Vikings were around in about 700AD which is an incredibly long time ago," said Mr...

Subject: The Kensington Runestone; verified as proof of Scandinavians inMinnesota in 1362 <http://www.ripsawnews.com/2001.08.15/cover.jpg> Verified at LastThe Strange and Terrible Storyof the Kensington RunestoneBy Jim Richardson andAllen Richardson The comfortable scientific and scholarly worlds of history, archeology,runology and Scandinavian linguistics have all been rocked by recentdevelopments surrounding a single stone in west centralMinnesota. The Kensington Runestone, thought for over 100 years to be a hoax, nowstands verified as a genuine artifact commemorating the deaths of 10medireview Scandinavians in Minnesota in the year 1362. A recent piece of linguistic scholarship by Dr. Richard Nielsen has hit thescene, which seems to demonstrate conclusively...

September 10, 2007 Builder found Vikings washed up at pubJack Malvern Archaeologists believe they have found the only intact Viking boat in Britain beneath the patio of a Merseyside pub. The 10th-century vessel was discovered in the 1930s by builders excavating the basement of the Railway Inn on the Wirral peninsula, but they covered it up because they feared an archaeological dig would disrupt their work. The boat would have been forgotten had one of the builders not reported his discovery to his son, who passed the information on to academics at Nottingham University. Stephen Harding, of the university’s archaeology...

Irish Viking trade centre unearthed Almost 6,000 artefacts and a Viking chieftain's grave have been discovered One of the Vikings' most important trading centres has been discovered in Ireland. The settlement at Woodstown in County Waterford is estimated to be about 1,200 years old. It was discovered during archaeological excavations for a road by-pass for Waterford city, which was founded by the Vikings. The Irish government said the settlement was one of the most important early Viking age trading centres discovered in the country. Its working group, which includes archaeologists from Ireland's museum and monuments service, said it was of...

THEIR reputation for raping and pillaging may not have set them out as the ideal role-models for an environmentally-friendly way of life. But it seems that lessons could perhaps be learnt from the Vikings after the intriguing discovery in Yorkshire of what is believed to be a metal recycling centre dating back to the 11th century. Historians and metal detector enthusiasts have made the find which is being heralded as evidence of how the Norse invaders recycled their fearsome array of weapons. Hundreds of pieces of metal including arrowheads, shards of swords and axe heads have been unearthed as part...

An analysis of DNA from a Viking gravesite near a 1000 year-old church in southern Greenland shows that those buried there had strong Celtic bloodlines... The analysis -- performed by Danish researchers on bones from skeletons found during excavations in south Greenland -- revealed that the settlers' Nordic blood was mixed with Celtic blood, probably originating from the British Isles. Danish archaeologists are currently conducting the first regional study of southern Greenland's original settlers, whose colonies date back to the year 985. The skeletons disinterred outside the old church also date back to just a few years after that period....

Greenland's early Viking settlers were subjected to rapidly changing climate. Temperatures plunged several degrees in a span of decades, according to research from Brown University. A reconstruction of 5,600 years of climate history from lakes near the Norse settlement in western Greenland also shows how climate affected the Dorset and Saqqaq cultures. Results appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The end of the Norse settlements on Greenland likely will remain shrouded in mystery. While there is scant written evidence of the colony’s demise in the 14th and early 15th centuries, archaeological remains can...

600-Year-Old American Indian Historical Account Has Old Norse WordsBy Larry Stroud, Guard Associate EditorPublished on Thursday March 15, 2007 Vikings and Algonquins. The first American multi-culturalists? BIG BAY, Mich. — Two experts on ancient America may have solved not only the mysterious disappearance of Norse from the Western Settlement of Greenland in the 1300s, but also are deciphering Delaware (Lenape) Indian history, which they’re finding is written in the Old Norse language. The history tells how some of the Delaware’s ancestors migrated west to America across a frozen sea and intermarried with the Delaware and other Algonquin Indians. Myron Paine,...

Did the Vikings Stay... Vatican Files May Offer Clues. / How did the Swedes end up in Minnesota?

From the moment that they ransacked a remote priory at Lindisfarne in 793, the Vikings have had a bad press. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s entry for the year says that the raiders made “lamentable havoc in the church of God in Holy-island, by rapine and slaughter”, fixing the popular image of the Vikings for the next 1,200 years. New evidence suggests that many of the Norse invaders were in fact model immigrants. Historians will try to redress the balance today at a conference at the University of Cambridge and show that the Vikings who settled in Britain and Ireland were technologically...