However, historical evidence from the 19th Century… strongly suggests the stone is a 19th-Century creation of a Scandinavian immigrant (likely a Swedish immigrant working at the local train depot).' In 2011, Lyle Tompsen, an archaeologist who specialises in the Viking era, analysed the runestone and wrote a paper concluding: 'The veracity of the Heavener stone as a Viking artifact is problematic. Before all man-made lakes and dams, these little creeks were big rivers and waterways back then.' 'Don't think about how the waterways look now. 'The Poteau River is just a few miles from here,' said Garcia. Two additional sandstone slabs, each with runic markings (not enough to be translated), were found a mile north and a mile south of the Heavener Runestone, which park officials say indicates that the carvings were boundary markers.Īccording to Farley, Vikings could have easily travelled south from Newfoundland along North America's eastern seaboard, then swung around the tip of Florida to the Gulf of Mexico where they could enter the Mississippi River, which flowed into to the Arkansas River, which in turn led into the Poteau River in Oklahoma. Ultimately, Farley led the charge that Vikings sailed inland from the Gulf of Mexico 600 to 800 years ago and left their mark in this canyon. 'If the Vikings had sailed to Russia, Ireland, England, France and to the far end of the Mediterranean, why would it have been impossible for them to reach Oklahoma via the Mississippi River?' 'A study of the fascinating Norse sagas revealed the efforts of the Norse inhabitants of Greenland to colonise the eastern coast of America from approximately 1002 until 1010 ,' she wrote. She gathered evidence that supported her claim that Vikings had visited North America and were more than capable of travelling up rivers and creeks in longboats that could float in shallow water. Throughout her career, Farley consulted with Norse historians, geologists and other epigraphists.

For years, white Oklahomans called it Indian Rock, mistakenly thinking that the carvings were Native American. The first modern knowledge of the runestone dates to the 1830s, when it was found by a Choctaw hunting party. Two decades later, she returned to study it, as an amateur runologist and self-taught epigraphist. She first saw the relic while hiking as a young girl in 1928 and was fascinated by it.

' Gloria Farley spent her whole life researching this, and she has a lot of evidence to back it up.'įarley – who grew up in the town of Heavener where the runestone was found and who passed away in 2006 – is a legend in these parts. 'Do I think the Vikings carved this? I do,' said Rogers, as we stood in the protective wood-and-glass 'house' built around the 3m-by-3.6m slab. Some believe that these cryptic inscriptions are runes (ancient alphabetical characters) carved into the towering stone circa 1000 CE by Norse explorers who travelled up the Arkansas River to this remote part of landlocked America.

We were deep in the rolling, scrub-forest foothills of the Ouachita Mountains in far eastern Oklahoma, and we were on our way to view a slab of ancient sandstone that still has experts scratching their heads and debating about the eight symbols engraved on its face. 'She travelled all around the US, went to Egypt and went to different places looking at different markings.'įaith Rogers, an environmental-science intern and volunteer at the Heavener Runestone Park, led me down a cobblestone path toward one of the 55-acre woodland's biggest attractions – which is also one of the US' biggest historical mysteries. ' spent the majority of her adult life researching the stone,' said Amanda Garcia, Heavener Runestone Park manager.

Viking runes