A Visit to Heavener

I know a little bit about petroglyphs. I've studied them in the Mojave Desert, as well as other places that my travels take me, such as New Mexico. With this in mind, I stopped my trip home in Oklahoma to visit the Heavener Runestone, near Sallisaw, Oklahoma and Fort Smith, Arkansas. I tried my best to enter the site with an open mind, but also refrained from checking my brain at the reception desk.

Here are the pictures I took.

I wish I could say that I left convinced that Northern Europeans carved these runes between 600 and 800 AD, as described by the staff and exhibits on-site. Unfortunately, I didn't.

Basically, here's the scenario advanced by the people behind the site:

Sometime between 600 and 800 AD, Viking explorers headed west from Greenland, and then headed down the coast of Vinland. They floated around Florida and entered the Gulf of Mexico, then navigated their boats up the Mississippi River, then up the Arkansas River. These theoretical Vikings then trudged 15 miles inland and up mountain to carve 8 runes into a 12 foot tall sandstone slab. While in the area, they apparently carved some runes into other stones, but left no traces of living in the area.

It's possible. Unlikely, but possible.

"Possible," however, only goes to demonstrate that a hypothesis should not be completely thrown out. It's nowhere near proven, and still highly unlikely.

Here are my main issues:

◆ Why? Why bother sailing all the way down Vinland, up a river, veer off onto another river (keep in mind we're going upstream here), then get off in an agriculturally unlovely place, climb a mountain and make no settlement, but post a "I wuz here" sign?

◆ Records? Islendingabok (forgive the lack of diacritical marks; I want to write, rather than spending the entire night wandering through ASCII characters) tells us that Greenland was discovered and colonized from Iceland, which wasn't yet settled in 600 AD. If there were enough people crossing over to Vinland (past Greenland and Markland) to have a successful voyage to the Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississippi River, shouldn't someone have made it home to spread the word of these countries, sometime before 986 AD?

◆ Physical Remains? No actual archaeological excavation has been done on this site, but no non-native artifacts have been reported, apart from the runestones themselves (I'm deliberately ignoring the tales of the old men of the area, who claim there used to be a "Viking cave" near the stone, full of old horseshoes and cave drawings. No sign of this cave exists today, nor did the 54-year-old man working in the site office have any recollection of it, although he often camped near the stone while growing up). Considering the number of runestones that have been found in the area, and presupposing that only a small sample would be readily locatable in a rocky area, where are the artifacts to support the presence of this culture?

◆ Time Period? According to Eric Christiansen (The Norsemen in the Viking Age), places the Viking Age starting at its earliest in 700 AD ("depending on where and who you are," Introduction, page 7). Not to get redundant, but why would these people (assuming they already had the technology necessary for trans-oceanic travel by this period) cross the ocean when they hadn't even gotten around to needing to settle Iceland yet?

◆ Carving Datings? The main investigator of the stones, Ms. Gloria Stewart Farley, in the early days of her investigations, chose to clean out the lichens and other detritus clogging the runic inscription -- with a wire brush. This demolished any chances I know of that an active date (by chemical or physical means) could be obtained from testing the stone. While not in itself proof that the carvings are not ancient, this fact certainly doesn't help the case.

◆ Imaginary Princes? The Shawnee Runestone from the same area supposedly says "Medok" (although I find the assignation of the 4th rune as Othala slightly problematic). "Medoc" is an area of France and "Medok" seems to be a popular Slavic name. Ms. Farley attempts to make a connection with the apocryphal Welsh prince Madoc:

Medok is similar to Madoc, the name of a Welsh prince. Ancient records state that he came to America in the year 1170 A.D., then returned to Wales for ten shiploads of colonists which he led up the Mississippi River. Could this stone have marked his grave? The voyages of Madoc had been studied when, in 1960, I had written a 59-page term paper on pre-Columbian discoveries and was impressed by accounts written by early explorers of Welsh-speaking Indians. In 1961 a book was published that included an entire chapter on Madoc, which is quite fascinating. That the carved stone might be Madoc's gravestone is very improbable. The Welsh did not use third century A.D. Norse runes. The name Medok is not Madoc. But anything written in runes is worth an investigation.
For the full excerpt, visit this site.

◆ Problematic Translations? Speaks for itself; read the above full excerpt.

◆ Barry Fell. Archaeologists are a fairly accepting group of people; there are few true outcasts in the field. Two exceptions to this rule are Eric von Daaniken and Barry Fell, both individuals whose whacked-out theories went beyond "pushing the boundaries" to "hurting the discipline." Barry Fell was the primary source of validation I noted when perusing Ms. Farley's book in the site office.

◆ The Stone Itself? With all the runic carvings in this area, why is the Heavener Runestone restricted to 8 runes? Both Old World and (other dubious) New World examples set up an expectation of long carvings that at least tell the story of the individual who dedicated the stone, and the identification of the rister. None of this is visible on Heavener.

I'm going to stop here; I'm not trying to rant. Any of these issues, by itself, can be discounted. Any number of them together can be discounted as well. Together, however, there's a pattern of problems and no true evidence whatsoever. The only thing one can say for certain is this: on a beautiful site in Oklahoma stands a stone engraved with 8 runes. Go see it; there's no admission charge. Expect to get lost when you're looking for the site.

Posted: Fri - August 5, 2005 at 12:08 PM

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A Visit to Heavener