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00:00The thing you find is always in the last place you look, right?
00:07Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's that?
00:09Is that 1144?
00:11It's easy to miss these carvings.
00:13The ridge of the nose and the mouth.
00:16Yeah, I found it in a farm field, and it dates to 1320.
00:20Found it in the centre of Manitoba.
00:22This is epic.
00:23Oh, look at that.
00:24Oh, a piece of iron.
00:25Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute.
00:27That was the moment where I really thought that I might have
00:29actually gotten eaten by a polar bear.
00:30The Beringon grizzlies, I mean, they're pretty big customers.
00:33There are glacial scratches on the backside of it.
00:37You can't fake this.
00:59The thing you find is always in the last place you look, right?
01:17With the help of a local guide, Joe and David track down the location of a storied rock with writing on it.
01:24I make a trench sort of up the last slope that we're going to try because we're done.
01:29And I'm just shoveling a little bit.
01:31David comes over and we're shoveling.
01:32I said, David, this is exactly the kind of face that you said you'd carve into if you were here.
01:37And bingo.
01:39Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
01:40What's that?
01:41We see one, a number.
01:43Is that 1144?
01:45That's kind of, that can't be, that's got to be a 1944.
01:52Even though it wasn't white man's writing on a rock, they were encouraged and continue looking.
01:58We were approximately here looking for a white man's writing on a rock and had a fair bit of success today after digging a lot.
02:13Found some inscriptions, not the right ones.
02:16But maybe it's on a face that we're going to have to revisit.
02:20There's just too much snow, like three feet of snow, right?
02:23The things we found in Barons River, the initials, absolutely not what we were looking for.
02:31But what was interesting is we almost didn't find them.
02:34They're not what we were looking for, but it showed us that it's easy to miss these carvings.
02:40It's the last night in Barons River for the team.
02:45Joe and David dissect what went right and what could be done better in the next trip.
02:51Once home, they will scout new locations and gear, as well as look through local stories for to decide what to pursue next.
03:06Before heading home, the team meets with William from nearby Bloodvane River First Nation.
03:12He knows of something in the woods that will interest the crew.
03:16One of the things that's happened over the 10 years is people find out we're looking for something and they start telling us about stuff they've seen.
03:25Then the discussion is, what is it?
03:28So a lot of these things we haven't got to go see.
03:31The stones at Bloodvane we came across because a person in Barons River said, hey, I know somebody who found something.
03:39That word of mouth is exactly how they found Lazabeto.
03:43Hey, go look over there.
03:44So we had to go look.
03:46We'll just go up this rock here.
03:48This way?
03:49Yeah, this clearing.
03:50Okay.
03:51Just to respect the site, what should we do?
03:52We'll follow your lead.
03:54What I will do is I will put the back one in front.
03:57That's just basically it.
03:59Joe and David defer to William's experience and reverence for the natural area they are imposing on.
04:06In order to gain access to this sacred site, you must have permission and be accompanied by a member of the community.
04:14I overdressed.
04:16We'll follow you.
04:17We'll let you break trail too.
04:19Let me break trail?
04:21The youngest guy first.
04:24Yeah.
04:25Sure.
04:26Okay, just gonna take a bit of shoveling all the way from here, all the way this way.
04:31So what are we looking for here?
04:33You don't see it?
04:34No.
04:35Wow.
04:36Yeah.
04:37A lot of people don't see it.
04:42So this particular rock faces south.
04:48Uh-huh.
04:49And in the southern area is the white shell area.
04:52Yep.
04:53Home of the, you know, the petroforms, the pictographs, and where the Creator sits.
04:59This rock and others in the area are significant to the people and history of Bloodvein First Nation.
05:09Yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of sites down there.
05:11A lot of history.
05:12And then a lot of stuff.
05:13It's actually why we're interested in petroglyphs and rock stuff rather than painting.
05:19Because painting, well-documented, well-researched, but there aren't a lot of stone carvings or petroglyphs in the area.
05:28They're, because, like, your ancestors didn't have chisels that didn't chisel, but they're very good painters.
05:33Mm-hmm.
05:34So they made a lot of pigments and colors to paint with.
05:37Well, I wouldn't know about chisels.
05:40How did they come up with this?
05:41Well, that's why we're interested.
05:42Yeah, it's like, huh, that's interesting.
05:44I'm gonna go stand back and take a look here.
05:46Sure.
05:47We're really interested in stone carvings because it's one of the known things Scandinavians and Greenlanders and Icelanders did to mark stuff.
05:56And stone carvings aren't normally found in the prairies.
06:02The indigenous cultures did a lot of rock painting, but not stone carvings.
06:10This is the eyebrows right here, the rigid nose, and the mouth.
06:17Mother Nature always plays a role, so you gotta respect that.
06:21What it is, it's a facial feature.
06:26How it came to be, I have no idea.
06:31So I'll explain here after I've made my offering of tobacco to this rock.
06:38The Anishinaabeg people communicate with water spirits at specific sites by producing an offering as a sign of respect or a request for help with hunting or travel.
06:53Our natural tobacco grows out here in the forest.
07:02It's made of red willow.
07:03It's a knick knick, right?
07:04It's a knick knick, right?
07:05Yeah.
07:06Tobacco is a strong medicine that can heal if you believe in it, if in your culture.
07:15And the offering to the sites where you visit is a good respect to the natural sites that you find in our forests.
07:28So I'm placing this tobacco down for this rock.
07:35We met William, told us about the site, the rock face site, plowed in through some three-foot snow.
07:43We got way more snow than I thought.
07:45Good thing we had the Sherp.
07:46A lot of history in the area, but another lead, another mystery.
07:54Back at the family cabin in Chalet Beach, Joe, David and Mackenzie study maps and discuss what's next.
08:02This brings up a previous trip when the team took a boat up north to try and reach Hudson's Bay.
08:09The most disastrous excursion that we have gone on, I would say, is Uncle Joe and Dad had a good idea of taking a whaling boat down the Nelson River to York Factory.
08:21It's a bit of a grunt to get from the end of the Hudson Bay to Lake Winnipeg.
08:27Once you get to Lake Winnipeg, you pretty much can go anywhere in the continent.
08:30So we got basically to the mouth of the Hudson Bay, decided that we couldn't make it around, tied up to this island, I guess, that had been man-made and abandoned years ago.
08:42And it turned out we had landed essentially on a polar bear's front step.
08:45And when the tide went down, our boat went sideways.
08:49The polar bear came around the corner swimming.
08:52We were surprised.
08:53And I think that was the moment where I really thought that I might have actually gotten eaten by a polar bear.
08:58In Hudson Bay, we experienced a lot of polar bears.
09:02In the area we are, the polar bear population is very healthy.
09:06And they don't want to eat you because they're fat, dumb and happy eating seals.
09:11They won't bug you if you don't bug them or surprise them.
09:15But again, if they are hungry, they will eat you.
09:18You just do not want to get close without being prepared.
09:26So we spotted him, oh, 150 yards away.
09:29When he turned, you can see he's got a gigantic hump signature of grizzly bears.
09:34The bearing ground grizzlies, I mean, they're pretty big customers and grizzlies are a little bit more unpredictable.
09:40Been here for three days.
09:42Now we've generated enough cooking smells and garbage that the local bear, proprietor of the establishment here, has come to see who's in his cabin.
09:53Number one thing is, if it's a bearing ground grizzly, if he's coming to investigate, he's coming to investigate.
10:00Everybody's got whistles and we'll have some bear spray and we have some non-lethals with us and we have lethals.
10:07I don't think we're going to get into a situation where we're going to have to shoot anything.
10:11But now that this guy's around, we can't wander around by ourselves all that easily.
10:16Even going to the bathroom, take a can of bear spray with you.
10:19Try and go with someone all the time, because then people can look around.
10:23Because there's so many willows here, unfortunately, he could be having a nap on the side of the trail.
10:28Overnight, you go down, you have a pee, you're having a pee, you're looking around at the moon or something, and all of a sudden, he's right there.
10:37You remember when we went to Gillum?
10:42Yep.
10:43All the way down here, we overnighted here with the polar bear.
10:46The boat we took was like a Royal Navy whale boat, like 28 feet long, and a nine horse that we did some calculations and figured out that's sort of six or four to six Norse rowers, you know?
10:56Could they make it there?
10:58Specifically, could they make it this way because you're upstream?
11:01Right.
11:02We proved, or at least showed, that it's possible to come up here.
11:09Showing that the Vikings could have completed this journey with the equipment they had 1,000 years ago, narrows down locations the team could search for artifacts, or tie to existing artifacts.
11:22It's possible they could have done this, but we've got some indications all along the way now that they might have done that.
11:29In the period of 500 years and nobody came, the Scandinavians, the Vikings, had ships that could go down rivers very easily.
11:36They already knew how to get to North America, because they were here in 1,000 A.D. on the East Coast.
11:41And if you look at how easy it is to coast crawl all the way into the continent, they had centuries to make it to Hudson Bay.
11:51Do you know what a York boat looks like? You know, the boats that the boat traders use all the way down?
11:57Oh, yeah, okay.
11:58Those are basically Viking ships.
12:00From York factory, that's what they call York boats.
12:02The York boat was named after York factory, a key spot for trading posts along the Hudson Bay.
12:09They were designed to transport goods through the unforgiving northern Canadian rivers.
12:14Designed by the Orkneys just south of the Westline.
12:16Yeah, and the Orkneys is basically the, you know, call them Vikings, but the Norse moving west.
12:24So a Viking ship and a York boat have the same pedigree, same style of sailing, same capability, can be rowed, can be sailed.
12:32And if you see pictures of them on Lake Winnipeg, you'd swear it was a Viking ship.
12:39David and Mackenzie visit the Canadian Geographical Society in Ottawa.
12:46While Joe is going to a field in southern Manitoba to work on his metal detecting skills with Randy Guerrillo,
12:54that might come in handy if they find the ancient cairn.
12:58We're at Fort Dufferin, just north of the American border, by about a mile.
13:03Back in 1872, the British U.S. Boundary Commission established a spot here to continue the 49th Parallel, to survey the 49th Parallel.
13:13So it started here and it was in a good spot because St. Joe's Trail and the Crow Wing Trail and the Red River.
13:20So it was sort of a confluence, it's sort of a meeting area. Good spot.
13:23I wondered often why it was here, but it was on the trade routes.
13:28Among Fort Dufferin's many historical roles over the years, it served as a post for the Northwest Mounted Police,
13:36as well as an immigration station for the southern border of Manitoba.
13:41Randy has found many treasures here over the years and thinks it will be a good place for Joe to train.
13:48So what you're looking for is basically maybe a little bit, what I call, good iron.
13:53Okay, so should we start right on the edge of the field or go in a little bit?
13:57Yeah, we could just angle it right from here and come on top of the hill up there.
14:01Technique is?
14:03Yeah, just back and forth.
14:05A good swing, but not too close to each other.
14:08So it'll chatter a little bit if it's like, you know, you might catch a little piece of iron.
14:14Randy's metal detecting skills and equipment
14:18are second to none.
14:20Joe is happy Randy is on the team and helping ahead of their upcoming trip to Minnesota.
14:26There, they hope to investigate other artifacts that are claimed to be of Viking origin.
14:33We found Randy because we were looking for an expert in metal detecting.
14:37He turns out to be a very well-regarded, very experienced detectorist is what they call him.
14:43So we said, hey, we need someone who knows how to do this well.
14:47In the Northern Expedition, we want to use metal detecting to see if there's artifacts in sites we want to search.
14:56Because very much like L'Anza Meadow, metal got dropped.
15:01And there shouldn't be a lot of dropped metal things in places we're going.
15:08How do you determine exactly where it is where you have to dig?
15:11Well, that's just a pinpoint.
15:13So your pinpoint button is right here at the bottom.
15:15Okay.
15:16So you could just get the signal.
15:17You should get some signal here.
15:19Let me try it.
15:20I'm not getting anything.
15:22Yeah, sometimes they...
15:23Okay.
15:24Each blip and beep from the metal detector is key to identifying what is underneath the soil.
15:37That's out now.
15:38Yeah, I'll just use the pinpointer, Johan.
15:43Unless you can see it.
15:44There it is right there.
15:45Look at that.
15:46You know what that is?
15:49A little bullet?
15:51It's a .22.
15:5322, Sean.
15:54It's really exciting to find any artifacts that can be researched further.
15:59Because there are so few artifacts.
16:02Up north, I don't expect to find a Viking village.
16:05And go like, oh my gosh, look what we found.
16:08Finding even the boat rivet in Lazo Meadow changed history.
16:13No, it's actually the bullet itself.
16:16Yep.
16:17Yep.
16:1822.
16:19That's pretty good.
16:20Yeah, that's a small piece.
16:21Look at that, eh?
16:22And that's what these detectors do.
16:24They find that small little items.
16:26That's been fired out onto this field here.
16:28It's hit something.
16:29You can see the end of it.
16:30So it actually hit something and then dropped into the ground.
16:34Wow.
16:35That's pretty cool.
16:38Having found a needle in a haystack already, the two continue searching the area.
16:44Something big.
16:45Horseshoe.
16:46Can you hear it?
16:47Yeah, I hear it.
16:49There.
16:50Oh, yeah.
16:51There.
16:52Look at that.
16:53Well, that's significant.
16:55Oh, there's a stove part right there.
16:56Yeah, it's the little door on the front of the stove.
16:57Yeah, that's actually a kind of nice piece.
16:58Yeah, it is.
16:59Look at that.
17:00It's got a little design on it.
17:01It's got a design on it.
17:02Still see the hinges?
17:03Yeah.
17:04The latch?
17:05Yeah.
17:06It's in good.
17:07That's cool.
17:08Another discovery close by.
17:09This small metal door from a wood stove could have been resting and hiding here in the ground
17:23for more than 150 years.
17:25That is kind of interesting, yeah.
17:27I'm surprised.
17:28That's just pieces left over from the thing, but that's interesting because had that been
17:35an axe head, it didn't show up a whole lot more than some other scrap pieces that weren't
17:41very big.
17:42Right, but you were getting sort of a decent, there was still like a half and half kind of
17:47a sound that maybe it was a little bit bigger.
17:50Interesting to see who manufactured that, but that's sort of late 1800s, mid 1800s.
17:54Oh yeah, yeah.
17:55Yeah.
17:56Does this make me a professional yet or not?
17:58Well...
17:59Not quite, right?
18:00Well, you've got a ways to go, but...
18:01You're too kind.
18:04Randy's metal detectors are sophisticated enough to not only locate an item, but to indicate
18:10a possible size and composition.
18:13So how far can we detect something a reasonable size like a coin or a button?
18:18A good setting, you could probably get it probably maybe a coin, maybe about 10 inches.
18:23He previously used these complex tools to find something that could change the known history
18:28of North America.
18:33When he called me, I said, okay, well, I'll come down and I'm going to bring a coin with me
18:37that I found many years ago and I'll show it to Johan.
18:42So that's when I just pulled out this.
18:45How many years ago did you find that?
18:48About 2017.
18:51I told Johan, I said, yeah, I found it in a farm field by Emerson and it dates to 1320.
18:59The first time I saw that coin, he didn't know the story that we were following.
19:06He said, hey, these are things I have found before.
19:09And then he pulls out this penny and goes, and then I found this penny.
19:13And it's a 1320 penny.
19:15And it just about fell over because I'm going like, what, did you just say 1320?
19:19This discovery is incredible.
19:22A coin potentially dropped 150 years before Columbus arrived in North America.
19:28How did it get there?
19:30This could be part of what helps support Joe and David's theory
19:34that Vikings traveled further inland than previously thought.
19:38When I found it, I had no idea what it was.
19:41I usually have a Canadian or American silver coin.
19:44And all of a sudden, this pops up and the king is staring at me with the flowing hair.
19:50With the internet now, you can do a lot of research.
19:52And it probably took me a couple hours.
19:55And then I knew exactly, you know, the king, King Edward II,
20:00found out how old it was.
20:02That is the oldest English coin found in Canada.
20:05And it's on the route just before the day to the Kensington Runestone
20:10from where Hudson Bay would lead you down this river to Minnesota.
20:16That connection makes it kind of interesting and we have to follow up on it.
20:21Most settlers are not going to have a 500-year-old coin in their pocket.
20:26That's like, why would you immigrate with that?
20:29This one's 1320.
20:31At the latest, 1325.
20:33Found in the centre of Manitoba.
20:36This is epic.
20:37Many travellers and settlers would have passed through the area.
20:41It was a bit of a stopping point for immigrants coming in the late 1800s.
20:46A lot of people went through there.
20:47But in the late 1800s, this coin was already 400-plus years old.
20:52So it could have been dropped by some of those folks, maybe.
20:56There are many, many possibilities.
20:59It's not impossible to think that a Viking might have left this behind 700 years ago.
21:06Of course, I said, well, you know, we Norse, we like our beer.
21:12They're going by.
21:13The Norse guy goes off the boat to have a pee, falls out of his pocket, ends up where you found it.
21:21It's just, it's certainly possible that that could have happened.
21:25Discoveries like this fuel Joe and David's expeditions to prove that Viking explorers were in North America long before any other Europeans.
21:36So I think the route from England through the Scandinavian countries, Iceland, Greenland here, I like that one.
21:44One significantly unique aspect of Randy's coin is that it was homemade, not pressed by a machine.
21:52It's sort of like a hand-forged tool versus a machine-made tool.
21:56The machine-made tool is precise.
21:59These may all show slight differences simply because they're handmade.
22:06Back in Fort Dufferin, Randy takes Joe through all the steps of finding that rare coin.
22:12When you found the coin here, it gave a distinctive chirp, but you could tell it was something different.
22:18The way it's red on the gauge, it was silver. It was going to be silver.
22:23It's going to be silver.
22:24It's going to be silver. Okay.
22:25Yeah.
22:26So you could tell the experience, right?
22:27Yeah.
22:28But when it came on the ground, it was silver, but it wasn't Canadian or American.
22:33No.
22:34I knew exactly sort of that it was going to be a silver coin because it just sounded right.
22:39The numbers were up there.
22:40The sound was good.
22:41So it was like, it could be American, Canadian coin, but from, you know, maybe from the 1870s, 1880s, like I usually find on there.
22:49But this was a little bit different.
22:51When I first saw that, that the monarch, the king, looking at you with the flowing hair, that's like, that's like a wow moment, I guess.
23:03A lot of times it's not about the monetary thing. It's about the history. It's about, you know, something old.
23:08Randy had discovered the oldest coin ever found in Canada, dating back to the 14th century.
23:15The coin was later verified as originating in England, and to date, there hasn't been currency found in Canada that predates it.
23:24In Ottawa, David and Mackenzie meet with Rosemary Thompson of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.
23:34Hello, hello. Come on in.
23:35Hi, how are you?
23:36Nice to see you.
23:37Yeah, Mackenzie.
23:38Oh, hi, Mackenzie and David. Good to see you again.
23:41David.
23:42The organization was founded in 1929, with the goal of advocating a greater understanding and appreciation of Canada's geography.
23:52Mackenzie and David are members of the Society, and are visiting today to utilize the stories and knowledge of other explorers on their upcoming Northern Expedition.
24:02Let's head upstairs. I'll show you the falls. It's really beautiful.
24:05Sounds good.
24:06Okay, good. And we're very lucky because we look out onto the Rideau Falls.
24:10Oh, wow.
24:11They are going.
24:12Which is really spectacular.
24:13To become a member or fellow in the RCGS is considered an honor and privilege.
24:20Once accepted, among other things, you must be an activist for the Society's mission and volunteer your time.
24:28There are more than 1,500 fellows, including the entire Faraheim team.
24:33Just before the end of the tour, Rosemary shows David and Mackenzie something that she knows will spark their interest.
24:42This is a sled that was given to us. So this went across the Arctic. And it's from the 60s. So it's not that old.
24:49Wow.
24:50And look at the technology of the 60s versus today. And of course it's a dog sled. And you can see the old skis and, you know, the poles. And I love this because if you take a look inside the box, you can see, you know, sort of some of the provisions.
25:05The Arctic display highlights the sacrifices that David and Mackenzie's predecessors would have made in the name of exploration.
25:13It's something that they won't take for granted in their own expeditions.
25:17A couple of the big artifacts that were there currently were the sled and then some of the inventory that some explorers went up with, like their coats and their goggles and their diaries.
25:32In the RCGS, there's a sled that was used on a high Arctic expedition. It's based on thousands of years of Inuit knowledge. And to get into the area where the Cairn could be, even 70 years ago, you were using something based on that technology.
25:54I'm so glad we don't have to do that. Because with modern technology, our expedition into the low Arctic is via plane. And it would be a hard slog to do this expedition compared to even 70 years ago.
26:09Meanwhile, in Fort Dufferin, Joe is eager to find more artifacts with Randy.
26:14We're not stopping except for silver or gold now.
26:17Sounds good to me.
26:18No silver, no gold, no stopping.
26:20I'm stopping.
26:24Getting a 65 right in here.
26:26A big item?
26:27Yeah, 65. It's filling in the bottom.
26:31Let me have the shovel. I've got two hands here.
26:35Randy uses a pinpointer, which provides a precise location for buried metal objects.
26:42Over here?
26:43Yeah, close. We're close.
26:44Oh.
26:45Oh.
26:46Oh.
26:47Oh, look at that.
26:48Oh, a piece of iron.
26:49It's a part of a chisel.
26:51Oh, wait a minute.
26:53What's that?
26:54That's a socket?
26:55Yeah, it's a tool.
26:56That's a tool.
26:57Oh, you know what?
26:58Joe goes in for a closer look at the object.
26:59What the hell could that be?
27:00I don't know.
27:01Something was a fix to it with the wood hat, probably.
27:02If I was a real romantic, I would say that's a spear point.
27:04Yeah, unfortunately, it's all flat on this side.
27:05It's a little premature to think that.
27:06It's laying on this side, maybe.
27:07Yeah, it could be.
27:08But, you know, there is a place for a shaft, a handle.
27:09Yeah.
27:10No telling how long.
27:11Yeah, it's socketed.
27:12Yeah, it's socketed.
27:13That's cool.
27:14Yeah.
27:15We'll have to keep that XRF it, and then we can tell how old it is.
27:17Yeah.
27:18That's interesting right there.
27:19Yeah.
27:20That was worthwhile.
27:21Well, that's the difference between amateurs and professional metal detectionists.
27:23Didn't you find this one?
27:24I think you found something.
27:25Yeah.
27:26Well, I got a long way to go to be in this side, but...
27:27This side, maybe.
27:28Yeah, it could be.
27:29But, you know, there is a place for a shaft, a handle.
27:30Yeah.
27:31No telling how long it is.
27:32Yeah.
27:33That's cool.
27:34Yeah, it's socketed.
27:35That's cool.
27:36That's cool.
27:37Yeah.
27:38We'll have to keep that XRF it, and then we can tell how old it is.
27:39Yeah.
27:40That's interesting right there.
27:41Yeah.
27:42That was worthwhile.
27:43Well, that's the difference between amateurs and professional metal detectionists.
27:48Didn't you find this one?
27:49I think you found something.
27:50Well, I get a long way to go to be anything but a rank amateur, so...
27:55But thanks for coming out and showing me how this works.
28:00That's kind of interesting, actually.
28:02Yeah.
28:03Interesting to see what that actually is.
28:04Looks like a keeper.
28:05Yeah, I would say so.
28:06Hey.
28:07It looks like a blade of some sort because it's flat on one side on the backside.
28:11Well, listen, hey, this is going to be cool.
28:13Okay.
28:14It's going to be interesting to see what that is.
28:15Great.
28:16The team's discoveries continue to support their theories of Vikings coming to North America's
28:21inland via Hudson Bay.
28:24The next trip is to Minnesota, where they intend on inspecting the Kensington runestone closely.
28:30The runestone is a large grey wacky stone slab found in the late 1800s near Alexandria, Minnesota.
28:37The runestone contains Norse writings and is dated 1362.
28:46The runestone is highly controversial.
28:49So Johan meets with Janey Weston, a rune expert, ahead of their Minnesota trip, to learn more about the Kensington runestone.
28:56So what first got you interested in runes?
28:59Taking a look at the Kensington runestone is what really got me started.
29:03Janey is an expert in calligraphy, languages and stone carvings.
29:08She began studying the fabled Kensington runestone with her father, Robert, years ago.
29:15At that time, the museum board really wanted my input as a stone letter carver.
29:23My dad and I were asked to come and look at it, and we were provided with a very good portable microscope.
29:32We brought our own lenses and it was out of the case, and we were given four and a half hours to look at it.
29:43Janey and her father were there to help determine the stone's authenticity.
29:49It weighs approximately 200 pounds.
29:52It's 30 inches high and 16 inches wide, and stored behind glass for safekeeping.
30:05The Norse characters inscribed on the stone suggest a Viking expedition in the area that went gravely wrong.
30:13Eight Geats and 22 Norwegians on an exploration journey from Vinland to the west.
30:18We had camped by two skerries one day's journey north from this stone.
30:22We were out to fish one day.
30:24After we came home, we found ten men, red of blood and dead.
30:28We have ten men by the sea to look after our ships, 14 days' travel from this island.
30:34When we came home, translated, it's thought that Vinland refers to the landing area on the east coast of North America.
30:41Geats were Swedish people, and skerries were small rocky islands.
30:47The AVM inscription likely refers to Ave Virgo Maria, which is a Latin prayer for protection from evil.
30:55And the ship's 14 days' travel from this island is potentially referencing a north point of Hudson's Bay.
31:02We didn't know Old Norse.
31:07We were not looking at it for the linguistics.
31:12But I was looking at it as a letter carver.
31:17Looking at it very close with the microscope, I could see that whoever carved it must have been swearing up a storm.
31:28Because the first word on the second line popped off.
31:34That's what happened.
31:35One thing I noticed when my dad and I were looking at it, on the top edge of it, there is a distinct chisel mark hit right here.
31:48Ah.
31:49At the same depth as the step down from this surface to this surface.
31:58That distance is where a chisel was placed on the top, back from the surface.
32:05Every time a line of writing went across this spalling off zone, I'll call it.
32:14Looking at the crystalline structure of the quartz crystals in this gray wacky, you can see the weathering in relation to the time it was carved.
32:30Yeah.
32:31And then the third that my dad and I were looking at was the backside of the stone is what was up.
32:44Yeah, it's face up.
32:45Because it's, yeah.
32:46And there are glacial scratches on the backside of it.
32:51How long has the newspaper been in existence?
32:58Oh, since 1886.
33:00137 years.
33:01That's a long time.
33:03Yeah.
33:04Joe visits Karen Borgford-Botting at the office of the Icelandic Logberg Heimskringler newspaper.
33:11It's the oldest regularly published paper in North America that serves the Icelandic community.
33:18As the team continues to build their case about their ancestors arriving to inland North America 700 years ago, they look to appropriate avenues to spread the word of their discoveries.
33:29The Icelandic newspaper is one example of how we get the word out. Having a magazine or a newspaper or a radio show get the word out, it gets us connected to people who may have information.
33:41I'd say we have probably 6,000 readers.
33:44I know that I'm going to be talking to a lot of folks that I know that they read one that's passed on and on and on.
33:50You don't want to pack the, you know, you don't want to, you want to keep it.
33:53And so the one way to keeping it is pass it on to someone else to read.
33:56That's the beauty of having a physical thing because you can feel it, touch it, read it, and then give it to somebody else because you don't want to get rid of it.
34:04Yeah.
34:05But let's go and chat in the boardroom and I can tell you what we've been up to.
34:09Sure.
34:10The first issue of the paper was printed on September 9th, 1886, and continues to thrive because it gives a voice to people of Icelandic heritage across North America.
34:24Some of the earliest Icelandic settlers brought books and not much more when they first came to North America in 1875.
34:33Although they wanted to be patriotic to Canada, they also did not want to give up their Icelandic culture and history.
34:41And so they started the newspapers to share in Icelandic.
34:45And then in 1959, after it had been published in Icelandic, it started to gradually morph into English.
34:53So they maintained their language, their culture, their history, they did politics.
34:59Icelanders are known for keeping meticulous family records that go back a thousand years.
35:05A passion for their history continues to this day.
35:08The first paper we opened up, we had the story about the Kensington stone.
35:21I didn't know you were coming to talk about that.
35:23No, this is excellent.
35:24Karen has no idea that the team have plans to visit the runestone in Alexandria, Minnesota in the coming weeks.
35:31When Joe was at the newspaper and he was presented with a newspaper that's talking about the runestone,
35:37that's why we are out meeting people.
35:40Because people have bits of information that they may not understand, connect to the story.
35:46You know, the follow up on this story and other, this will sort of kick off this, the new look at,
35:52did they come from Hudson Bay and end up in Minnesota?
35:55In and around when the stone was carved, there was a medieval warming period and almost certainly
36:00the Northwest Passage was ice free, at least in the summertime.
36:04Coincidences are funny because it's like luck.
36:07And we've been working on this a long time and as we talk to people more,
36:12we get these lucky coincidences that lead us to more things.
36:17Joe tells Karen how he plans to find the Viking Cairn in the north.
36:22A trapper in a blizzard came across something that was a cairn that was sealed,
36:28fairly large thing and it looked like a grave or a crypt or something.
36:31No windows, no doors, no way to get in.
36:33He didn't get into it, it was in the middle of a blizzard.
36:35And he looks around and he sees this thing and it's like six feet wide, six feet tall,
36:39it's like 12 or 16 feet wide, not a small thing.
36:42Is it a Viking grave?
36:44Hard to say.
36:45Is it a grave?
36:46We hope we can find it and shed some light on that.
36:49So it's going to be really interesting.
36:50It's going to be an interesting ride.
36:59The first thing we did is we picked up on, you know, from a couple of days ago,
37:03where we thought this cache was.
37:05So the focus you guys were looking at was not the barren areas but the actual trees and like the ravines, right?
37:18Exactly.
37:19Okay.
37:20That's the noodle of track we did.
37:30Yeah.
37:31Nothing really jumped out and said, hey, you know, let's look here.
37:34But we had feelings.
37:36We had some feelings or at least I did.
37:38See those two black dots on the kind of the left half,
37:41sort of to the center but on the left side?
37:43They don't look like they go that far in but they were kind of interesting.
37:47So you can definitely see there's valleys that are rivers.
37:52So if you think about whoever built this thing, you're not going to build this in a river.
37:57Just that's just you're not going to do it.
37:59Bog, same thing, right?
38:00So we started looking at the high points and it's you can really see them.
38:06We just don't have enough days left because we ran into some weather and a whole bunch of other things.
38:11I think we still have some, you know, another couple of hours of flying in the 185.
38:16You can see a lot.
38:17Yeah.
38:18You can see a lot.
38:19You can see right into the trees.
38:20Some of them still have a lot of snow in.
38:23Is it under the snow?
38:26It is evident that questions of Norse presence are met with uncertainty.
38:31Even with experts like Jaini suggesting the runestone's authenticity, doubt remains.
38:37Perhaps if something definitive was found, like the cairn, it would create a domino effect for other artefacts believed to be of similar origin.
38:47With my dad's interest in paleoclimate change and glaciers coming and going, he knew exactly what glacial scratches look like.
38:57Glacial striations, or scratches, occur when glaciers move over land and pick up sediment and rock.
39:04These tiny accumulations to the glacier act as sandpaper, scraping rock underneath it and showing the direction it flowed.
39:13When a glacier is moving, it has all sorts of grit and sand and pebbles and other stones that have been carried by that glacier.
39:25You can't fake this. It has to be authentic.
39:29Even with Jaini's expert opinion on the Kensington runestone, it is still argued to be a hoax.
39:36However, Jaini's father's observation of the glacial scratches helps authenticate the age of the stone, thus proving that the stone is, at the very least, local to the area.
39:48We could see that the glacially scratched backside, that was about 8,000 years of weathering.
39:59Because that's when the glaciers receded from that part of Minnesota, 8,000 years ago.
40:05And then we had exposed at the time of carving, and then fresh.
40:11Control, yeah.
40:12Yes.
40:13So what happens with crystal structure when it's weathered is that it becomes more rounded.
40:26That's what happens with the weathering process.
40:30Right.
40:31Here we have not-so-weathered, sharp edges, more cube-y stuff going on.
40:37Cubic.
40:38The exposed surface, and especially on the back, very rounded crystals.
40:43You can see it under the microscope.
40:46Somewhat rounded.
40:48Oh.
40:49Not super sharp, crisp edges to the crystals.
40:51Yeah.
40:52And then the Newton Winchell flake removal area.
40:55Fresh.
40:56Sharp.
40:57Yeah.
40:58You can't fake this.
40:59It has to be authentic.
41:00It had nothing to do with linguistics.
41:03It's the differences of weathering, comparing one surface to another.
41:14The team will meet up in Alexandria, Minnesota, at the Runestone Museum.
41:19The museum was established in 1958, and houses a 40-piece collection of artifacts from middle-aged Nordic explorers.
41:28However, the team is also looking to talk to locals about their own artifacts that haven't made it to museums yet.
41:38A piece sitting on someone's mantle could unlock a Viking mystery.
41:43David, Joe, and Mackenzie think some Alexandria residents might be skeptical of them, but they are just treasure hunters.
41:54The team will have to earn the trust, just like their ancestors did, and prove to the people they are looking for truth and answer.
42:02It's important for us to be seen as open-minded and trustworthy, because being told people's oral stories may not be anything we're looking for.
42:14But until we talk to them and we build a trust and they tell us more, we have to go listen to it.
42:21But they are also aware of the scrutiny that may come from the general scientific and geological communities if they find answers that contradict current historical beliefs.
42:33Let's go!
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