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Statue of "Big Ole the Viking" in Alexandria, Minnesota, proclaiming the city the "Birthplace of America," based on an assumed authenticity of the Kensington Stone. The Kensington Runestone is a slab of greywacke stone covered in runes that was discovered in Western Minnesota, United States, in 1898.
The runestones are unevenly distributed in Scandinavia: The majority are found in Sweden, estimated at between 1,700 [2] and 2,500 (depending on definition). Denmark has 250 runestones, and Norway has 50. [2] There are also runestones in other areas reached by the Viking expansion, especially in the British Isles. [3]
A number of runestones have been found in Oklahoma. All of them are of modern origin dating to the 19th century "Viking revival" or were produced by 19th-century Scandinavian settlers. The oldest find is the "Heavener Runestone," first documented in 1923.
A runestone is typically a raised stone with a runic inscription, but the term can also be applied to inscriptions on boulders and on bedrock. The tradition of erecting runestones as a memorial to dead men began in the 4th century and lasted into the 12th century, but the majority of the extant runestones date from the late Viking Age.
There is no physical evidence of a Norse presence in North America except for the far east of Canada. [112] Other so-called discoveries, mostly in the United States, have been rejected by scholars. [113] Supposed physical evidence has been found to be deliberately falsified or historically baseless, often to promote a political agenda.
In another set of four Viking-era monuments, known collectively as the Bække-Læborg group, two runestones mention a woman named Thyra. Those stones are associated with a carver named Ravnunge ...
Runology is the academic study of the runic alphabets, runic inscriptions, runestones, and their history. Runology forms a specialised branch of Germanic philology . The earliest secure runic inscriptions date from around AD 150, with a potentially earlier inscription dating to AD 50 and Tacitus 's potential description of rune use from around ...
They found that as early as 1939, the runestone was located upland and may have been buried. [3] The inscriptions on the stone were visible only for a short period of time between the shifting tides, due to dramatic erosion of the shoreline at Pojac Point and the fact that the stone was positioned only 20 feet (6.1 m) from the extreme low tide ...