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00:04The thing you find is always in the last place you look, right?
00:07Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's that?
00:09Is that 1144?
00:10It'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.
00:19Found it in the center of Manitoba.
00:21This is epic.
00:22Oh, look at that.
00:23Oh, a piece of iron.
00:24Oh, wait a minute.
00:25Wait a minute.
00:27That was the moment where I really thought that I might have actually gotten eaten by
00:29a polar bear.
00:30The Beringon grizzlies, I mean, they're pretty big customers.
00:33There are glacial scratches on the backside of it.
00:36You can't fake this.
00:39Oh, look at that.
01:14the thing you find is always in the last place you look right with the help of a local guide
01:19joe and david track down the location of a storied rock with writing on it i make a trench
01:25sort of up the last slope that we're going to try because we're done and i'm just shoveling
01:30a little bit david comes over and we're shoveling i said david this is exactly the kind of face
01:34that you said you'd carve into if you were here and uh bingo whoa whoa whoa what's that we see
01:41one
01:41a number is that 1144 that's kind of that can't be that's gotta be a 1944
01:51even though it wasn't white man's writing on a rock they were encouraged and continue looking
02:05we were approximately here looking for white man's writing on rock and had a you know fair bit of
02:11success today after digging a lot found some inscriptions not the right ones but maybe
02:17it's on a face that we're going to have to revisit there's just too much snow like three feet of
02:21snow
02:21right the things we found in barons river the the the initials absolutely not what we were looking for
02:31but what was interesting is we almost didn't find them they're not what we were looking for but it
02:36showed us that it's easy to miss these carvings it's the last night in barons river for the team
02:44joe 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
02:58what to pursue next
03:05before heading home the team meets with william from nearby blood vein 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
03:21and they start telling us about stuff they've seen then the discussion is what is it so a lot of
03:28these things we haven't got to go see the stones at blood vein we came across because a person in
03:36barons river said hey i know somebody who found something that word of mouth is exactly how they
03:42found laws about oh hey go look over there so we had to go look we'll just go up this
03:47rock here this
03:48way yeah this clearing okay just to respect the site what should we do we'll follow your lead uh what
03:54i will do is i will put tobacco in front that's just basically it joe and david defer to william's
04:02experience and reverence for the natural area they are imposing on in order to gain access to this sacred
04:09site you must have permission and be accompanied by a member of the community i overdressed we'll
04:17follow you we'll let you break trail too yeah let me break the youngest guy first yeah sure okay
04:27just gonna take a bit of shoveling all the way from here all the way this way so what are
04:31we looking
04:32for here you don't see it no wow a lot of people don't see it so this particular rock faces
04:47south
04:49and in the southern area is the white shell area yep home of the uh you know the petroforms
04:55the pictographs and uh yeah where the creator sits manito up here this rock and others in the area are
05:03significant to the people and history of blood vein first nation yeah it's there's a lot of a lot of
05:11sites a lot of history and then a lot of stuff it's actually why we're interested in petroglyphs and
05:16rock stuff rather than painting because painting well documented well researched uh but there aren't a lot of
05:23stone carvings or petroglyphs in the area they're uh because like the your ancestors didn't have
05:31chisels they didn't chisel but they're very good painters so they they made a lot of uh pigments and
05:36and colors well i wouldn't know about chisels how did they come up with this well that's why we're
05:42interested yeah it's like oh that's interesting i'm gonna go stand back and take a look here we're
05:47really interested in stone carvings because it's one of the known things scandinavians and greenlanders and
05:53icelanders did to mark stuff and stone carvings aren't normally found in the prairies they're uh the
06:03indigenous cultures did a lot of rock painting but not stone carvings this is the eyebrows right here
06:12the rigid nose and the mouth mother nature always plays a role so yeah you gotta respect that
06:21what it is what it is is uh it's a facial feature how it came to be i have no
06:29idea
06:30so i'll explain here after i've made my offering of tobacco to to this rock
06:42the anishinabeg people communicate with water spirits at specific sites by producing an offering
06:49as a sign of respect as a sign of respect or a request for help with hunting or travel
06:56our natural tobacco goes out here in the forest it's made of red willow it's a connect connect right yeah
07:06tobacco is a strong medicine that can heal if you believe in it if in your culture
07:14and uh the offering to the sites where you visit is a good good respect to the natural sites that
07:25you
07:25find in in our forests so i'm placing this tobacco down for this rock
07:35we uh we met william uh told us the uh about the site the the rock face site uh plowed
07:42in through
07:43some three foot snow we got way more snow than i thought good thing we had the sheriff a lot
07:47of
07:47history in the area but another another lead another mystery
07:53back at the family cabin in chalet beach joe david and mackenzie study maps and discuss what's next
08:01this 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
08:16idea
08:16of taking a whaling boat down the nelson river to york factory it's it's a bit of a grunt to
08:22get
08:23from the end of the hudson bay to lake winnipeg once you get to lake winnipeg you pretty much can
08:29go
08:29anywhere in the continent so we got basically to the mouth of the hudson bay decided that we couldn't
08:34make it around tied up to this island i guess that had been man-made and abandoned years ago when
08:42it
08:42turned out we had landed essentially on a polar bear's front step and when the tide went down our
08:48boat went sideways the polar bear came around the corner swimming we were surprised and i think that
08:55was 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 in the area we are the polar bear population is
09:05very
09:05healthy and and they don't want to eat you because they're fat dumb and happy eating seals
09:12they won't bug you if you don't bug them or surprise them but again if they are hungry
09:18they will eat you you just do not want to get close without being prepared
09:25so we spotted him a 150 yards away when he turned you can see he's got a gigantic hump
09:31signature of grizzly bears the bearing ground grizzlies i mean they're pretty big customers and
09:37uh grizzlies are a little bit more unpredictable been here for three days now we've generated enough
09:44cooking smells and garbage that the local bear proprietor of the establishment here has come to
09:51see who's in this cabin number one thing is if it's a bearing ground grizzly if if he's coming to
09:59investigate he's coming to investigate everybody's got whistles and we'll have some bear spray and we have
10:04some non-lethals with us and we have lethals i don't think we're going to get into a situation
10:09where we're going to have to shoot anything but now that this guy's around we can't wander around
10:14by ourselves all that easily even going to the bathroom take a can of bear spray with you try and
10:19go with someone all the time so because then people can look around you know because there's so many
10:23willows here unfortunately he could be having a nap on the side of the trail you know overnight you go
10:29down you have a pee you're having a pee you're looking around at the moon you're something and all of
10:32a
10:39these right there you remember when we went to gillam yep all the way down here we overnighted here with
10:45the polar bear the boat we took was like the royal navy whale boat like 28 feet long and a
10:49nine horse so
10:50we did some calculations and figured out that sort of six or four to six north rowers you know could
10:56they make it there specifically could they make it this way because you're upstream right we we we
11:02proved or at least showed that it's possible to come up here showing that the vikings could have
11:11completed this journey with the equipment they had 1 000 years ago narrows down locations the team could
11:17search for artifacts or tie to existing artifacts it's possible they could have done this but we've
11:25got some indications all on the way now that they might have done that in the period of 500 years
11:30and
11:31nobody came the scandinavians the vikings had ships that could go down rivers very easily they already
11:36knew how to get to north america because they were here in a thousand a.d on the east coast
11:40and if you
11:42look at how easy it is to coast crawl all the way into the continent they had centuries to make
11:49it to
11:50hudson bay do you know what a york boat looks like you know the the boats that the the port
11:56traders
11:56used all the way down yeah okay yeah those are basically viking ships yeah from york factory that's
12:01what they call the york boats the york boat was named after york factory a key spot for trading posts
12:07along the hudson bay they were designed to transport goods through the unforgiving northern canadian rivers
12:13designed by the orkneys just though the westline and the orkneys is basically the you know call them vikings but
12:21the the the the norse moving west so that a viking ship and a york boat have the same pedigree
12:27same
12:27style of sailing same capability can be road can be sailed yep and if you see pictures of them on
12:34lake winnipeg you'd swear it was a viking ship
12:40david and mckenzie visit the canadian geographical society in ottawa while joe is going to a field in
12:48southern manitoba to work on his metal detecting skills with randy guerrillo that might come in
12:55handy if they find the ancient cairn we're at fort deferens just north of the american border by about
13:02a mile back in 1872 the u.s british u.s boundary commission established a spot here to continue the
13:1049th parallel to survey the 49th parallel so it started here and it it was in a good spot because
13:16saint joe's trail and the crow wing trail and the red river so it was sort of a confluence it's
13:22sort
13:22of a meeting area good spot i i wondered the often why it was here but it was on the
13:27trade routes
13:29among fort dufferin's many historical roles over the years it served as a post for the northwest
13:35mounted police as well as an immigration station for the southern border of manitoba randy has found
13:43many treasures here over the years and thinks it will be a good place for joe to train
13:49so what you're looking for is basically maybe a little bit what i call good iron okay so should we
13:55start right on the edge of the field or go in a little bit or yeah we could just angle
13:58it right from
13:59here and and come on top of the hill up there technique is yeah just yeah map just back and
14:05forth okay
14:05a good a good swing but not too close to each other yeah so it'll chatter a little bit if
14:11it's like
14:12you know you might catch a little piece of iron yeah randy's metal detecting skills and equipment
14:18are second to none joe is happy randy is on the team and helping ahead of their upcoming trip to
14:25minnesota
14:25there they hope to investigate other artifacts that are claimed to be of viking origin
14:32we found randy because we were looking for an expert in metal detecting he turns out to be a very
14:38well-regarded very experienced detectorist is what they call them so we said hey we need someone who knows
14:45how to do this well in the northern expedition we want to use metal detecting to see if there's artifacts
14:54in sites we want to search because very much like lanza meadow metal got dropped and there shouldn't be
15:03a lot of dropped metal things in places we're going how do you determine exactly where it is where you
15:11have
15:11to dig well that's just a pinpoint so your pinpoint button is right here at the bottom okay so you
15:16could
15:16just get a signal you should get some signal here let me try it i'm not getting anything yeah sometimes
15:30each blip and beep from the metal detector is key to identifying what is underneath the soil
15:39so no yeah i'll just use the pinpointer johan unless you can see it right there look at that
15:48know what that is a little bullet it's a 22 22 show it's really exciting to find any artifacts that
15:57can be researched further because there are so few artifacts up north i don't expect to find a viking
16:04village and go like oh my gosh look what we found finding even the boat rivet in lasso meadow changed
16:12history but no it's it's actually the it's actually the bullet itself yep yeah yeah that's 22 that's
16:18pretty good yes small piece look at that eh and that's what these detectors do they find that small
16:25little items that's been fired out onto this field here it's hit something you can see the end of it
16:30so
16:30it actually hit something and then dropped into the ground wow that's pretty cool having found a needle
16:39in a haystack already the two continue searching the area something big can you hear it yeah i hear it
16:48there oh yeah there's that well that's significant no there's there's a stove part right there that
17:01it's the it's the little it's the little door on the front of the stove yeah that's actually a kind
17:05of nice piece yeah it is look at that yeah it's got a little design on it got a design
17:10on still see the
17:11hinges the latch yeah it's in good that's cool another discovery close by this small metal door
17:19from a wood stove could have been resting and hiding here in the ground for more than 150 years
17:27that is kind of interesting yeah i'm surprised that's just pieces left over from the thing but
17:32that's that's interesting because had that been an axe head it didn't show up a whole lot more than
17:39some other you know scrap pieces that weren't very big so right but you were getting a sort of a
17:44decent there was still like a half and half kind of a sound that maybe it was a little bit
17:49bigger
17:50interesting to see who manufactured that but that's sort of late 1800s mid 1800s oh yeah yeah yeah
17:55just make me a professional yet or not well not quite right you got a ways to go but you're
18:01too kind
18:02not randy's metal detectors are sophisticated enough to not only locate an item but to indicate
18:10a possible size and composition so how far can we detect something a reasonable size like a coin or a
18:17button a good setting you could probably get probably maybe a coin maybe about 10 inches he previously used
18:24these complex tools to find something that could change the known history of north america
18:32when he called me i said okay well i'll come down and i'm gonna bring a coin with me that
18:37i found
18:38many years ago and i'll show it to johan so that's when i uh just pulled out this
18:46how many years ago did you find that well 2017 when i told johan i said yeah i found it
18:53in a farm
18:54field by emerson and it dates to 1320. the first time i saw that coin he didn't know the story
19:04that we were following he said hey these are things i have found before and then he pulls out this
19:10penny
19:10and goes and then i found this penny and it's a 1320 penny and it's about fell over because then
19:17going like what did you just say 1320 this discovery is incredible a coin potentially dropped 150 years
19:25before columbus arrived in north america how did it get there this could be part of what helps support
19:32joe and david's theory that vikings traveled further inland than previously thought well when i found it
19:39i had no idea what it was i usually have a canadian or american silver coin and all of a
19:44sudden this
19:45pops up and the king is staring at me with the with the flowing flowing hair with the internet now
19:51you
19:51can do a lot of research and probably took me a couple hours then i knew exactly you know the
19:57the
19:58king that king edward ii found out how old it was that is the oldest english coin found in canada
20:05and it's on the route just before the day to the kensington runestone from where hudson bay would lead
20:13you down this river to minnesota that connection makes it kind of interesting and we have to follow
20:20up on most settlers are are not going to have a 500 year old coin in their pocket that's like
20:26why would
20:27you immigrate with that this one's 1320 at the latest 1325 found in the center of manitoba this is epic
20:37many travelers and settlers would have passed through the area it was a bit of a stopping point for
20:44immigrants coming in the late 1800s a lot of people went through there but in the late 1800s this coin
20:49was already 400 plus years old so what could have been dropped by some of those folks maybe it's you
20:58know there are many many possibilities it's not impossible to think that a viking might have left
21:03this behind 700 years ago of course i said well you know we norse we like our beer they're going
21:12by
21:13norse guy goes off the boat to have a pee falls out of his pocket ends up where you found
21:19it
21:21it's just it's a it's certainly possible that that could have happened discoveries like this fuel joe and
21:28david's expeditions to prove that viking explorers were in north america long before any other europeans
21:36so i think the the the route from england through the scandinavian countries iceland greenland here
21:43i like that one one significantly unique aspect of randy's coin is that it was homemade
21:50not pressed by a machine it's sort of like a hand forged tool versus a machine made tool
21:56the machine made tool is price precise yeah these these may all show slight differences simply because
22:03they're handmade back in fort dufferin randy takes joe through all the steps of finding that rare coin
22:13when you found the coin here it it gave a distinctive chirp but you could tell it was something different
22:18the way it and the way it's uh read on the on the gauge it was silver it was going
22:23to be silver it's
22:24going to be silver okay yeah but when it came on the ground it was it was silver but it
22:30wasn't it
22:31canadian or american i knew exactly sort of that it was going to be a silver coin because it just
22:38sounded right the numbers were up there the sound was good so it was like it could be american canadian
22:44coin but from you know maybe from the 1870s 1880s like i usually find on there but this was a
22:49little bit
22:50different when i first saw that that the monarch the king looking at you with the with the flowing hair
22:57that's like that's like a wow moment i guess yeah a lot of times it's not about the monetary thing
23:04it's about the history it's about you know something old randy had discovered the oldest coin ever found
23:12in canada dating back to the 14th century the coin was later verified as originating in england and to
23:19date there hasn't been currency found in canada that predates it
23:27in ottawa david and mckenzie meet with rosemary thompson of the royal canadian geographical society
23:34hello hello come on in hi how are you nice to see you yeah mckenzie oh hi mckenzie and david
23:40good to see you again the organization was founded in 1929 with the goal of advocating a greater
23:47understanding and appreciation of canada's geography mckenzie and david are members of the society
23:54and are visiting today to utilize the stories and knowledge of other explorers on their upcoming
24:00northern expedition let's head upstairs i'll show you the falls it's really beautiful sounds good okay
24:06good and we're very lucky because we look out onto the rito falls oh wow which is really spectacular
24:12to become a member or fellow in the rcgs is considered an honor and privilege once accepted
24:21among other things you must be an activist for the society's mission and volunteer your time there
24:28are more than 1500 fellows including the entire faraheim team just before the end of the tour rosemary
24:37shows david and mckenzie something that she knows will spark their interest this is a sled that was
24:43given to us so this is uh went across the arctic and it's from the 60s so it's not that
24:49old wow and look
24:50at the technology of the 60s versus today and of course it's a dog sled and you can see the
24:56old skis
24:56and you know the yeah the poles and i love this because if you take a look inside the box
25:02you can see you
25:03sort of some of the provisions the arctic display highlights the sacrifices that david and mckenzie's
25:09predecessors would have made in the name of exploration it's something that they won't take
25:15for granted in their own expeditions a couple of the big artifacts that were there currently were the sled
25:22and then some of the inventory that some explorers went up with like their coats and their goggles and
25:34their diaries in the rcgs there's a a sled that was used on a high arctic expedition it's based on
25:41thousands of years of inuit knowledge and to get into the area where the cairn could be even 70 years
25:49ago you were using something based on that technology i'm so glad we don't have to do that because with
25:57modern technology our expedition into the low arctic is via plane and uh and it would be a hard slog
26:05to
26:05do this expedition compared to even 70 years ago meanwhile in fort dufferin joe is eager to find more
26:12artifacts with randy okay we're not stopping except for silver gold now sounds good to me no silver no gold
26:19no stopping i'm stopping getting a 65 right in here a big item yeah 65 it's uh it's filling in
26:30the bottom
26:32yeah let me have the shovel i got two hands here yeah randy uses a pinpointer which provides a precise
26:39location for buried metal objects over here yeah close real close oh oh look at that oh a piece of
26:48iron
26:50it's a part of a chisel oh wait wait wait wait a minute
26:55what's that
26:58that's a socket yeah it's a tool that's it oh you know what joe goes in for a closer look
27:05at the object
27:06what the hell could that be something was a fix to it with the wood handle probably if i was
27:14a real
27:14romantic i would say that's a spear point but yeah it's a little it's a little premature to think that
27:22because it's laying on this side maybe yeah it could be but you know there's a place for a shaft
27:26a handle yeah no telling how long yeah that's cool yeah that's cool yeah we'll have to keep that
27:33uh xrf it and then we can tell how old it is yeah that's a that's interesting right there yeah
27:41that
27:41was worthwhile well that's the difference between amateurs and professional metal detectionists
27:47didn't you find this one i think you're fossil well i get a long way to go to be anything
27:53but a rank
27:53amateur so but thanks for oh thanks for coming out and showing me how this how this works that is
28:00that's kind of interesting actually yeah interesting to see what that actually looks like a keeper yeah
28:05i would say so it looks like a blade of some sort because it's flat on one side on the
28:10back side
28:11well listen hey this is going to be cool it'll be interesting to see what that is great
28:15the team's discoveries continue to support their theories of vikings coming to north america's inland
28:21via hudson bay the next trip is to minnesota where they intend on inspecting the kensington runestone
28:28closely the runestone is a large gray 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 so johan meets with janie weston a rune expert ahead of their
28:53minnesota trip to learn more about the kensington runestone so what first got you interested in runes
28:58taking a look at the kensington runestone is what really got me started janie is an expert in
29:05calligraphy languages and stone carvings she began studying the fabled kensington runestone with her
29:13father robert years ago at that time and 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
29:30portable microscope
29:32we brought our own lenses and it was out of the case and we were given four and a half
29:41hours to look at it
29:44janie and her father were there to help determine the stone's authenticity
29:49it weighs approximately 200 pounds it's 30 inches high and 16 inches wide and stored behind glass for
29:58safekeeping
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 we had camp by
30:19two scaries one day's journey north from this stone we were out to fish one day after we came home
30:25we
30:25found 10 men red of blood and dead we have 10 men by the sea to look after our ships
30:3114 days travel from
30:33this island 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 the avm inscription likely refers to ave
30:50virgo maria which is a latin prayer for protection from evil and the ships 14 days travel from this island
30:58island is potentially referencing a north point of hudson's bay
31:07we didn't know old norse we were not looking at it for the linguistics but i was looking at it
31:16as a
31:17letter carver looking at it very close with the microscope i could see that whoever carved it must
31:27have been swearing up a storm because the first word on the second line popped off that's what happened
31:35one thing i noticed when my dad and i were looking at it on the top
31:39the top edge of it there is a distinct chisel mark hit right here ah at the same depth as
31:51the step down
31:52from this surface to this surface that distance is where a chisel was placed on the top back from the
32:04surface every time a line of writing went across this spalling off zone i'll call it looking at the
32:17crystalline structure of the quartz crystals in this gray wacky you can see the weathering in relation to
32:26the time it was carved yeah and then the third that my dad and i were looking at was the
32:37back side of
32:39the stone is what was up yeah space up and there are glacial scratches on the back side of it
32:55how long has the newspaper been in existence oh since 1886 137 years that's a long time
33:04joe visits karen borgford botting at the office of the icelandic logberg heims kringler newspaper
33:11it's the oldest regularly published paper in north america that serves the icelandic community
33:16as the team continues to build their case about their ancestors arriving to inland north america
33:23700 years ago they look to appropriate avenues to spread the word of their discoveries the icelandic
33:30newspaper is one example of how we get the word out having a magazine or a newspaper or a radio
33:36show
33:37get the word out it gets us connected to people who may have information i'd say we have probably 6
33:44000
33:44readers i know that i'm going to be talking to a lot of folks that i know that they read
33:48one that's
33:49passed on and on and on you don't want to pack the uh you know you don't want to you
33:52want to keep it and
33:53so the one way to keeping is pass it on to someone else to read that's the beauty of having
33:57a a physical
33:58thing because you can feel it touch it read it and then give it to somebody else because you you
34:03don't
34:03want to get rid of it you know but let's um let's go and chat in the boardroom and i
34:08can tell you what
34:08we've been up to the first issue of the paper was printed on september 9th 1886 and continues to thrive
34:18because it gives a voice to people of icelandic heritage across north america some of the earliest
34:25icelandic 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
34:40culture and history and so they started the newspapers to share in icelandic and then in 1959
34:47after it being published in icelandic it started to gradually morph into english so they maintained their
34:54language their culture their history they did politics icelanders are known for keeping meticulous
35:01family records that go back a thousand years a passion for their history continues to this day
35:10joe has a fortuitous moment when karen randomly opens a paper to a story on the kensington runestone
35:17the first paper we opened up we had the story about the kensington stone i didn't know you were
35:22coming to talk about this you know it's excellent karen has no idea that the team have plans to visit
35:28the runestone in alexandria minnesota in the coming weeks when joe was at the newspaper and he was
35:35presented with a newspaper they're talking about the runestone that's why we are out meeting people
35:40because people have bits of information that they may not understand connect to the story you know the
35:47follow-up on this story and other this will sort of kick off this the new look at did they
35:53come from
35:53hudson bay and end up in minnesota in or in around when the stone was carved it was the medieval
35:58warming
35:59period and almost certainly the northwest passage was ice free at least in the summertime coincidences
36:05are funny because it's it's like luck and we've been working on this a long time and and as we
36:10talk to
36:11people more we get these lucky coincidences that lead us to more things joe tells karen how he plans to
36:19find the viking cairn in the north a trapper in a blizzard came across something there was a cairn
36:26that was sealed fairly large thing and it looked like a grave or a crypt or something no windows no
36:32doors no way to get in he didn't get into his middle of a blizzard and he looks around and
36:36he
36:36sees this thing that's like six feet wide six feet tall it's like 12 or 16 feet wide not a
36:41small thing
36:42is it a viking grave hard to say is it a grave we hope we can find it and shed
36:48some light on that so
36:49it's going to be really interesting it's going to be an interesting ride
36:58the first thing we did is we picked up on you know from the a couple of days ago
37:03where we thought this cache was
37:12so the focus you guys were looking at was not the barren areas but the actual trees and like the
37:17ravines right okay
37:27that's the noodle of track we did yeah nothing really jumped out and said hey you know let's
37:34look here but we had we had feelings we had some feelings or at least those two black dots on
37:40the
37:40kind of the left half sort of to the center but the left side they don't look like they go
37:44that far in
37:45but they were kind of interesting so you can definitely see there's valleys that are rivers
37:51so so if you think about whoever built this thing you're not going to build this in a river just
37:57that's
37:57just you're not going to do it bog same thing right so we started looking at the high points and
38:02it's you
38:03can really see them so we just don't have enough days left because we ran into some weather and a
38:09whole
38:09bunch of other things but i think that i think we still have some you know another couple hours of
38:14flying in the 185 you can see a lot like yeah you can see a lot you can see right
38:19into the trees
38:19some of them still have a lot of snow in is it under the snow
38:26it is evident that questions of norse presence are met with uncertainty
38:30even with experts like janey suggesting the runestone's authenticity doubt remains perhaps
38:37if something definitive was found like the can it would create a domino effect for other artifacts
38:44believed to be of similar origin with my dad's interest in paleo climate change and glaciers coming
38:52and going he knew exactly what glacial scratches look like glacial striations or scratches occur when
39:00glaciers move over land and pick up sediment and rock these tiny accumulations to the glacier act as
39:08sandpaper scraping rock underneath it and showing the direction it flowed when a glacier is moving it has
39:16all sorts of grit and sand and pebbles and other stones that have been carried by that glacier you
39:25can't fake this it has to be authentic even with janey's expert opinion on the kensington runestone
39:32it is still argued to be a hoax however janey's father's observation of the glacial scratches helps
39:40authenticate the age of the stone thus proving that the stone is at the very least
39:46local to the area we could see that the glacially scratched backside that was about 8 000 years of
39:57weathering because that's when the glaciers receded from that part of minnesota 8 000 years ago
40:04and then we had exposed at the time of carving and then fresh control yeah yes yeah so what happens
40:14what happens with a crystal structure when it's weathered is that it becomes more rounded
40:26that's what happens with the weathering process right here we have not so weathered sharp edges
40:34more cubey stuff going on cubic the exposed surface and especially on the back very rounded crystals you
40:43can see it under the microscope somewhat rounded not super sharp crisp edges to the crystals and then the
40:53newton winchell flake removal area fresh sharp yeah you can't fake this it has to be authentic it had
41:00nothing to do with linguistics it's the differences of weathering comparing one surface to another
41:13the team will meet up in alexandria minnesota at the runestone museum the museum was established
41:20in 1958 and houses a 40-piece collection of artifacts from middle-aged nordic explorers
41:30however the team is also looking to talk to locals about their own artifacts that haven't made it to
41:37museums yet a piece sitting on someone's mantle could unlock a viking mystery
41:45david joe and mackenzie think some alexandria residents might be skeptical of them but they are
41:52just treasure hunters the team will have to earn the trust just like their ancestors did and prove to
41:59the people they are looking for truth and answer it's important for us to be seen as open-minded and
42:07trustworthy because being told people's oral stories may not be anything we're looking for but until we
42:15talk to them and we build a trust and they tell us more we have to go listen to it
42:21but they're also aware of the scrutiny that may come from the general scientific and geological
42:27communities if they find answers that contradict current historical beliefs
42:52so
42:53so
42:53so
43:05you
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