EDWARD LARSSON'S RUNE LISTS

The Kensington Runestone was sent to Sweden for study and display in winter 2003-4. Naturally, the story was featured in the media, and a researcher at DAUM (the dialect archive at Umea, in northern Sweden) was interested by a radio interview about the runes and pentadic numbers on the KRS. Among the items held in the Umea archive were personal papers of the late Edward Larsson (1867-1950) who had been raised at Holsåker near Borlänge in Dalarna, central Sweden. Though most concerned his interest in folk-music, two early documents showed runic alphabets and "pentadic" numbers which, on inspection, turned out to be the closest match ever found to the KRS symbols.

The number symbols had been used as equivalents for normal Arabic decimal numbers, to write dates for the two documents; the first by Edward's elder brother, dating from 1883, the second, a neater copy of the first, his own from 1885. The documents presented two different sets of historical runes- a variant of the traditional "futhark" with 22 symbols, and an alphabet of 27 symbols, including accented letters, designed for tranliterating text written in the modern alphabet. What is rather disturbing is that (as well as the pentadic numbers) the documents also presented a third alphabet, described by Larsson as a secret style, the oldest in the world, which had been used to write the tablets of the Law. We're not talking Moses here; the third alphabet was what is nowadays often called the "Masonic Cipher". It looks as if the teenage Edward, then an apprentice tailor, was introduced to the world of Freemasonry.

A version of the setsquare and compasses symbol

A version of the setsquare and compasses symbol

Any mention of Freemasonry in discussion of a probable conspiracy is unfortunate; in this case it's doubly so. The familiar Masonic emblem of the setsquare and compasses can (apparently legitimately) be interpreted as a monogram- for the same formula "AVM" (also seen written in Masonic literature as AUM) which, as discussed elsewhere on this site, unexpectedly appears in conventional non-runic letters on the Kensington stone. In a way it's all too neat- a conspiracy involving at least one Swedish Freemason, who both provides the runic script and incorporates into the stone's text a clue that will be understood by all other Freemasons, who should then do what they can to keep the stone from harm. Make of it what you will...

Much of the information given above is derived from discussions on the Internet newsgroup soc.history.medieval, but two essays from Tryggve Sköld of DAUM, who spotted the Larsson connnection, are available in their magazine DAUM-KATTA 13 (1.2Mb pdf).

I've prepared an illustration of the KRS text with the Larsson equivalents for each character: red for runes from the first runerow, green for runes from the second "modern" runerow, purple-blue for runes which are effectively the same on both runerows, and yellow for the pentadic numbers (note, by the way, that the pentadic symbol the Larssons identified as "0" was actually placed after the symbol for "9" indicating that it is really meant to be used the way 0 is in long numbers, to denote multiples of 10). Overall, there are only six characters which are significantly different, on the KRS from the Larsson runes: "o" is mirror-reversed; "v" uses a dot instead of a little hook in the left fork; "p" lacks the dots in the two loops; "ö" and "ü" both have lines crossing the vertical shaft; and "g" combines the left-fork of the second Larsson runerow with the dot of the g in the first Larsson row (so I've shown both Larsson g runes together in the illustration).

A new book by Scott Wolter, the petrologist who studied the weathering of the Stone, and Richard Nielsen, who analysed the text and runeforms, has met the Masonic "problem" very ingeniously, by tackling it head-on. Rather than try to deny the possibility of secret Masonic links, the authors have taken a leaf (or several) out of "The da Vinci Code" and produced an elaborate theory involving the alleged forerunners of the Freemasons, the Knights Templar. In full, this theory depends on the claim by Wolter that his detailed examination of the stone has indicated that certain apparently natural or accidental marks on it are really secret signs highlighting specific letters in the runic text. My own examination of detailed photos of the stone with lighting from various angles suggests that Wolter may be a victim of his own fascination with the stone, and of the natural human tendency to look for meaning and order in whatever we see.

In October 2009, a video of a presentation by Wolter the previous year was posted in sections in YouTube. Here are my comments on some of the points raised in that presentation:

The Spirit Pond Runestones: Find Site: Leaving aside for now the minor detail that the very early (1607) British Popham colony was known to be somewhere in the vicinity of Spirit Pond, what interests me about the find site is that it was in mud/sand on the shore. The scars of digging a hole in a beach are erased much more quickly than the scars of digging in land with growing vegetation, so this would be an obvious location to bury faked artifacts.
Spirit Pond Runestones: Walter Elliott is said to have scraped dirt from the stones with a pocket-knife.: Given that he was in the vicinity of the lost Popham Beach settlement, did it not occur to Elliott that pretty much anything he found would probably be of interest to a museum, and that he should tamper with it as little as possible?
Spirit Pond Inscription Stone: not enough word separators: One of the main accusations against the Kensington Runestone is that its grammar seems wrong for the 14th century. One way to help insure a fake against such accusations is to obscure the grammar- so blurring word boundaries would be a good idea for a faker. Such a trick would also have the bonus effect of encouraging discussion and analysis of the hoax object, to the great amusement of its creator.
Spirit Pond Inscription Stone: seems to contain various names: Names are handy for a historical hoaxer, because they often persist unchanged for many generations.
Spirit Pond Runestones: Spelling: Same purposes as the lack of word separators, but in my opinion, the hoaxer went too far here. For example, "TKA" for "TAK" (on the Map Stone) is an easy mistake to make in handwriting, but much more difficult when each letter takes several minutes to carve.
Spirit Pond Runestones: Double vowels described as "a late medieval feature": I have a feeling that this too may be related to accusations about the Kensington stone, as if the Spirit Pond hoaxer has deliberately read up on the development of features like umlauted vowels and tried to introduce a specifically late-medieval quirk.
A general grumble: "Arabic tens": Scott keeps referring to "Arabic ten" symbols on runestones, when what he actually means is " 'Pentadic ten' symbols which can also be used as decimal multiplier placeholders (in the same way Arabic notation can use the zero symbol) when pentadic numerals are used in Arabic powers-of-ten style"
Spirit Pond Inscription Stone: Two pentadic 11s, and one 12: Personally, I'd say the first 11 is actually a 12, but that may just be due to the lighting on the photographs I have studied
Spirit Pond Map Stone: "LAK" meaning "permanent positional feature": Oh please, give us a break! Why can't it be a slightly misspelled "LEK" (Norwegian for "game")?
Spirit Pond Map Stone: east at the top inconsistent with a modern hoax: Two problems here. First, only a really dumb modern hoaxer (definitely not the sort who would attempt to write in medieval Norse) would not have heard that medieval maps had east at the top. However- a really clever modern hoaxer would know that the practice of putting east at the top was hardly ever used on maps intended for navigation, because compasses point north-south, not east-west.
Spirit Pond Map Stone: Vinland two days south of Spirit Pond: Other evidence suggests that Maine is more likely to be IN Vinland.
Spirit Pond Map Stone: pictograms on reverse: Is it just my imagination, or could the hoaxer have read a book about the Walam Olum?
Spirit Pond: Roman/Arabic 40 symbol: Just a point of information here, with no absolute bearing on authenticity. The astrolabe at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford which Scott refers to is Inventory No. 37878 (the number he quotes, 191, is from an old catalogue, as is the estimated date- current thinking puts it around 1260 CE). Likely provenance is Spain. Full description and selection of images online at: the Museum's online catalogue/exhibition.
Hooked X symbolism: Tutankhamun's crook and flail.: Although the Tutankhamun sarcophagi show him holding the crook and flail crossed, with the curl of the crook at right, pointing inward, illustrations of other pharaohs show the two sacred implements held in a variety of ways (X with crook curl outward / side-by side roughly parallel / side-by-side with tips pointing outward / etc.) so the "hooked X" shape is clearly not the key factor.
Venus: red stone above "Masonic" keystone in Newport Tower: Earlier in the presentation, Scott spoke of the "Horns of Venus" and their link to the horned headdress worn by the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis, with the red solar disc between the horns. But he explains the big round red stone above an unusual keystone on the Newport Tower as representing Venus itself, not the sun.
"Pubic triangle" in window at Amiens Cathedral, France: Ummm- isn't that "pubic triangle" upside down?
Newport Tower "Venus" stone alignment with Kensington MN: That is very impressive indeed, but there's just one problem. Why? The necessary measurements were seriously non-trivial in the late Middle Ages, yet on land, where it was impossible to maintain a constant heading, over long distances, a compass bearing was far less useful than the actual coordinates would have been.
Kensington Runestone as land claim marker: Again, why? Until accurate and relatively simple techniques for measurement of coordinates were developed, land boundaries were described as far as possible in terms of natural features. For a large-scale land claim in North America (so important that it was allegedly signposted from Newport) there was a much more logical boundary nearby- check out the real boundaries between Minnesota and North Dakota, or South Dakota and Iowa!
The Sinclairs and Vinland: It is very likely indeed that the Sinclairs, with a power-base in the islands north of Scotland, which were ruled from Scandinavia for much of the Middle Ages, would have known of Vinland- not because of any Templar connections, but because it was part of their Nordic culture. The big question is, did Prince Henry Sinclair really have the opportunity to make a voyage of exploration, which would take him away from his duties for a very long time?
X X X X: I have a big problem with X. The obvious significant thing about X is that, in a linear writing system based on putting one symbol after another, X is one of the easiest symbols to create, requiring only two straight lines (and of the symbols requiring only two straight lines, it's the one which "fills" the greatest part of the available space, by touching all four corners). For this reason, it appears in numerous writing systems, with numerous meanings; there's no need to assume that its recurrence has any other overall significance.
The female classical statue atop the Capitol, Washington DC: She represents Freedom. Any representation of a single human figure has a 50% chance of being female, and given that male figures are used to represent ideas like War, there is a certain logic in representing happier concepts by a female figure.
Lozenges as latitude indicators (as seen in Rosslyn crypt): It's absolutely true that the solstice sunrise-sunset angles at the latitude of Rosslyn (55.86 degrees N) are almost exactly 90 degrees. The angles at Jerusalem (31.78 degrees N), however, seem to be 55 degrees, not 60. And it's a kind of long-winded way to indicate latitude...