Runestone hits the road with U-Haul (MN)

StarTribune.com ^ | 5/28/22 | Kelly Smith

[ButThreeLeftsDo]

A controversial Minnesota artifact is making a name for itself across the country in its next biggest publicity move.

The Kensington Runestone, which was unearthed in Minnesota but has been long disputed as a hoax, will now be featured on 2,300 20-foot moving trucks across the country.

U-Haul unveiled the image Saturday morning at the Alexandria museum that houses the stone during the city's "Awake the Lakes" celebration. About 1,000 people celebrated the announcement at the Runestone Museum with T-shirts and a truck depicting the stone behind a large Vikings ship -- the fourth image representing Minnesota on the company's trucks.

"It's just the wonderful marketing of 2,300 billboards across the country," museum volunteer Carol Meyer said. "As a nonprofit, we can't buy that kind of advertising."

The stone received national publicity in 2009 when a History Channel documentary aired. That helped pique interest in the stone, Meyer said, drawing 10,000 visitors to the museum last year.

[ButThreeLeftsDo]

Posted for the benefit of you-know-who....

;-)

[ButThreeLeftsDo]

Pong!

[MplsSteve]

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[WorkingClassFilth]

Kewl. I hope this sparks interest in all of the anamolies that defy the usual explanations about our origins, history and the created world.

[WorkingClassFilth]

Doh! I want people to be interested in anomalies, not anamolies!

[SunkenCiv]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Kensington-runestone_flom-1910.jpg

[SunkenCiv]

· GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach · · join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic · subscribe ·
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[ElkGroveDan]

With all that traveling I hope they don’t do anything to rune it.

[csvset]

Like a Runestone cowboy...

[SuzyQue]

They’re probably safe as long as they don’t travel the road to rune.

[TheOldLady]

It doesn’t really matter who got here first from Europe.

The Vikings visited a lot of places, but they just did a little raping and pillaging and went home, or got killed.

What matters is who colonizes, not who visits.

[cableguymn]

I prefer people interested in anemomes.

[NormsRevenge]

Cool.

Hometown stuff here.. remember seeing it as a kid..

Too bad Ole the Giant Viking can’t go with..

Used to always enjoy the Holiday Season, big Ole decked out as Santa Claus.

[NormsRevenge]

make a good commercial

—

How do you get a Runestone to roll?

U-Haul!

[SunkenCiv]

One reason given for the failure of the Viking colonies (there were some) to stick was the lack of firearms. They weren’t any better armed than the skraelings. In fact, had the Vikings not peaked circa 1066 (Battle of Stamford Bridge), they’d have eventually been blown off the high seas by all the rest of the navies in Europe — and that’s assuming one regards the Vikings as having a navy in any true sense. They are best described as, uh, merchant marines. :’)

Despite their navigating prowess, they used their ships to get around from land to land (w Scandinavia being dominated by fjords and mountainous landscapes), and to move along rivers through the countryside (the Varangians). They were all about trade, and there wasn’t much to trade for in the Americas. The colonies dwindled. Viking burial grounds (unless they cremated everyone) must have been next to their villages, but AFAIK, none have been found.

Then the climate turned with the arrival of the Little Ice Age. The Greenland colonies (there were two, plus some probable other isolated domiciles) were abandoned, the inhabitants may have returned to Iceland, or been absorbed by the Eskimos or whatever, or just died off. Assuming they even had a ship in inventory and had the choice, that is. There is and was no trees to build ships, so if no one happened to visit, they were stranded.

[SunkenCiv]

In her Plato Prehistorian: 10,000 to 5000 B.C. Myth, Religion, Archaeology, Mary Settegast reproduces a table which shows four runic character sets; a is Upper Paleolithic (found among the cave paintings), b is Indus Valley script, c is Greek (western branch), and d is the Scandinavian runic alphabet.

[SunkenCiv]

I can't believe there are only four topics in the keyword.

• Norse Stone Authenticity Put To Test (Kensington Runestone)

  11/16/2003 9:57:09 PM PST · by blam · 37 replies · 2,338+ views

  AP | 10-03-2003 | Travis Reed

  Posted on Fri, Oct. 03, 2003 ALEXANDRIA, MINN.Norse stone authenticity put to the test BY TRAVIS REED Associated Press Its authenticity may forever be in question, but the Kensington Runestone is on its way to Sweden, where a group of scientists will study it and lend their opinion to the question of whether the rock is really a centuries-old artifact or a 200-pound hoax. Scientists working with the Runestone Museum in Alexandria, Minn., are traveling with the stone and say they have new geologic findings that suggest it was buried far longer than anyone was settled in western Minnesota. The...
  
  
  

• Secret history of North America: Author to speak about Kensington Runestone, Vikings and Templars

  12/02/2009 10:49:42 AM PST · by americanophile · 39 replies · 1,630+ views

  Winona Daily News | November 30, 2009 | DARRELL EHRLICK

  Geologist Scott Wolter wants you to forget 1492. While you're at it, forget the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. Forget all of it. Forget Christopher Columbus because he wasn't the first European to visit North America and Wolter is out to prove it in his new book,"The Hooked X: The Key to the Secret History of North America." Minnesota and the Great Lakes states play a key part in that history, Wolter said, as Vikings and Cistercian monks traveled here leaving behind inscriptions and evidence that they were here long before Queen Isabella hocked her jewels to...
  
  
  

• Runestone Fakery [from 2002]

  12/07/2009 7:43:37 PM PST · by SunkenCiv · 10 replies · 659+ views

  Archaeological Institute of America | January/February 2002 | Eric A. Powell

  When Minneapolis artist Janey Westin first came across the runes near the town of Kensington, she assumed they were left behind by the same Norse explorers who created the so-called Kensington Runestone, found nearby in 1898. The infamous 200-pound rock is covered with runes that describe the travails of a party of Scandinavians beset by Indians in 1362. Though most scholars doubt the stone's authenticity, it continues to fuel debate about a Norse presence in the Midwest. Excited by the new find, the Kensington Runestone Museum paid for archaeological testing at the site, which yielded only a few Native American...
  
  
  

[TheOldLady]

So the stranded Vikings did colonize by accidental assimilation. Interesting. Viking blood would be quite diluted using that method though. ;-p

[NorwegianViking]

Thanks for the post. I would love to see it. I would also like to see the other runestone here in the U.S at Heavener, Oklahoma. From another article ...One of those others is the Heavener Runestone, in Heavener, Oklahoma. The 12-foot high monolith stands outside, shielded in a big box. According to the folks inthe interpretive center, the enscription on it dates back to AD 600-900, and tells the story of "Glome" who used the rock to lay claim to this part of the Sooner State... As in Alexandria, the folks here do not diss other runestones, knowing that Alexandria's rock is yet more evidence that Columbus was a Euro-come-lately. "They've got their runestone, we've got ours," the Heavener folks explain. "Ours is older." Other, less-glamorous runestones are in nearby Poteau and Shawnee. The Vikings (or some local farmers) were busy boys. http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/29041