Deep in the foothills of the Ouachita Mountains, just a few miles outside of Heavener, Oklahoma, stands a stone slab about 10 feet by 12 feet, chiselled with markings that have been identified as Norse runes.
Many Norse runestones have been found across the United States. Most people believe that they are modern, created by Scandinavian settlers who immigrated to post-Columbian America. Others believe that they were created by early Viking explorers who came to the New World with Leif Erikson and his followers in the 11th century.
Archaeological evidence shows that the Vikings were present in Newfoundland, Canada, around the year 1000 CE, aligning with the story of Erikson’s travels. However, the evidence suggests that their settlement was short-lived, probably because the voyage was expensive and not worth the return on investment.
Most people use this as evidence that the Vikings did not travel much further south than this point. But is it impossible to believe that some Vikings chose to sail their ships further south to see what this New World had to offer? Small parties would have left behind minimal archaeological evidence. Could runestones like the one found at Heavener be evidence of that early exploration?
The Runestone
People have known about the Heavener Runestone since at least the 1830s, when a Choctaw hunting party discovered it. It was immediately assumed that the inscription on the stone was made by local Native Americans. About 100 years later, in 1923, the Smithsonian documented the runestone and started to question the origins of the marks on the rocks. The markings were soon identified as Norse runes.
The stone inscription reads: ᚷᛆᛟᛗᛖᛞᚨᛐ, which transliterates in English as GNOMEDAL.
Interestingly, the inscription is in a mix of Elder Futhark runes, used between the years 300-800 CE, and Younger Futhark, used from 800 CE until around 1000 CE, and the adoption of Christianity and the Latin script. While most of the inscription is in Elder Futhark, the final L is reversed, and the second character is from Younger Futhark. This makes it difficult to date the inscription as it seems to be early but must date to after the rise of Younger Futhark.
These have been identified as Elder Futhark runes, which were only used until about the 8th century, when they were superseded by Younger Futhark. This is an anomaly, as the evidence suggests that the Vikings first discovered the New World around 1000 CE. Assuming this stone was erected sometime after that date, even by then, the inscription would have been archaic.
Initial interpretations of the inscription, “gnomedal,” have suggested that it reads “gnome valley,” and is a reference to the place, or it could be someone’s personal name. Some have also suggested that the inscription actually reads GLOMEDAL, meaning “Glome’s Valley.”
Studying the Runestone
While there was a widespread desire to believe that this was a real runestone, especially following similar discoveries elsewhere in the country, such as the Kensington Runestone in Minnesota, most believed that it was much later. Nevertheless, most people believed that it must date to well after the Viking Age.
Some people believe that the runes were carved by a Swedish captain who led German colonists to the area sometime between 1718 and 1720. However, even the suggestion that a Swedish captain accompanied these colonists is speculative.
Others suggest that it was a little older, made by a member of the La Salle expedition in 1687, who passed through the area when René-Robert Cavelier claimed an area further south for France. He established a colony in Texas in 1687. While attempting to walk to Illinois to get help for his struggling colony, he was killed by his own men.
Yet others suggest that it was inscribed by Swedish settlers in the area in the 19th century. This might explain the confusion with the runes, as they were well out of use by this time.
A New Viking Theory
The theory that the inscription dates to the Viking Age got a second lease of life when enthusiast Gloria Farley dedicated herself to studying the stone. She first visited the site in 1928 as a young girl, and then returned in 1951, determined to solve its mystery. She aimed to prove that it was inscribed by Vikings in the pre-Columbian age.
This kicked off decades of research in which Farley claimed a wide range of evidence for pre-Columbian visitation of America by the Vikings, but also the ancient Egyptians, Iberians, and Libyans. The wide net she cast undermined her theory about the Vikings, which should perhaps be looked at separately.
A Cryptic Date?
Farley’s “big breakthrough” with the Heavener Runestone came when she contacted a man named Alf Monge in California, who was born in Norway and was familiar with runic inscriptions and ancient Norse calendars.
Mpnge proposed that the Heavener inscription was a date, specifically November 11, 1012. This meshed with the idea that early explorers sailed along the Mississippi River.
He said that this explained the mix of Elder and Younger Futhark runes, and that this kind of date formula was used in ancient Norse cryptic puzzles.
The fact that the stone, if this interpretation is correct, uses the Christian “anno domini” system is possible, as Greenland converted to Christianity around the year 1000 CE, but this would have been at the very start of when they used this kind of dating.
Other Oklahoma Runestones
Farley and Monge argue that this theory is supported by two other runestones found in Oklahoma.
The Poteau Runestone was found by schoolboys in 1967 in the same county, La Flore County, as the Heavener stone. Its inscription reads ᚷᛆᛟᛁᛖᚨᛚᚦ, which translates as GLOIEA. Similar to the Heavener runestone, it has five Elder Futhark runes and one Younger Futhark rune, and two that could belong to either.
While many have suggested that this is a modern copy of the Heavener Runestone, Monge suggests another date, November 11, 1017, exactly five years after the Heavener stone. This suggests that these could be markers used to claim land, marking the date at which a person claimed possession.
Prince Madoc
The Shawnee Runestone was discovered not long after in 1969 by three children in Shawnee, Oklahoma. This runestone is even more curious than the others. All written in Elder Futhark, the inscription reads MEDOK.
Farley claimed that this must be a reference to Prince Madoc of Wales, who, according to folklore, sailed to the Americas in 1170.
Madoc was reportedly the son of a real 12th century Welsh king identifiable in the records, Owain Gwynedd. His kingdom was fraught with violence due to battles with other Welsh princes and with Henry II of England. There are potential literary references to him as early as the 13th century, though most of his story can only be traced back as early as the 15th century.
The earliest surviving full accounts of his journey to the New World come from the Elizabethan era, when English writers were trying to bolster the British claim to the New World over that of the Spanish. The accounts appear in Humphrey Llwyd’s Cronica Walliae (1559). John Dee then used the manuscript as his source for his Title Royal, in which he claimed that Madoc led a colony and inhabited “Terra Florida” around 1170. From here, the story was picked up and spread widely.
Most people dismiss this as a fictitious legend, but then again, the story of Lief Erikson was also only written down a few hundred years after his death, and it wasn’t widely believed that the story was true until about the 19th century. Solid evidence then came with the discovery of the Norse settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in 1960.
Is it not plausible that we might someday find hard evidence for Madoc’s journey? Could this runestone be that evidence? This would require explaining why a Welsh prince was writing in by then archaic Norse runes, but who knows.
The Vikings in North America
The story of the Vikings in North America is a complex one. The stories that the Vikings sailed from Europe to America around the year 1000 CE have been circulating for a millennium, believed by some and dismissed as legend by others. The idea rose in popularity in the 18th and 19th centuries as Norsemen joined the New World settlement, but firm evidence that moved this story from legend to history only really came in 1960.
Because of where the evidence was found, in Newfoundland, which is relatively close to Greenland, where the Vikings reportedly set off from, many people want to limit their incursion into the New World to that region. However, we know that the Vikings were avid explorers, and the call of the more welcoming and fertile lands to the south must have been tempting.
It is clear that nothing much came of this, probably because this New World was just too big and too far, so it was too expensive to really make much of the discovery, so any Vikings that travelled further south would have left a minimal mark on the archaeological record. However, that does open the possibility that they left some traces, like these runestones.
However, arguing that it is possible that these runestones could have theoretically been left behind by early Viking explorers and proving that they were left by Vikings are two different things. Runestones are hard to date. Methods like carbon dating can only be used to date the stone, which could be any age. Inscriptions are usually based on textual style and content, and the context in which they were found, which is challenging in the New World, where they have been recovered in isolation. That means that the best we can say about the Heavener Runestone and others found in Oklahoma right now is that we don’t know.
