I'm John Batchel with Martin Whittick. The book is American Vikings. We have L'Anse-en-Madow. That's established. You can visit it. There are remains of the camp. We have very little else that stands up, however. But there's been a lot of effort over the last few centuries. Martin, I enjoy these episodes because I'd always heard there were other places that the Vikings

traveled to.

We're looking for them.

I understand.

There continue to be, however, ruin carvings in rocks, Minnesota, Nova Scotia, Maine, and on.

I believe there's one as far south as Massachusetts.

Oh, there's one in Rhode Island.

What do we know about these carvings, these ruins,

and what they claim to be?

From the 18th century onward, there's an increasing interest in the North

sagas, particularly in the 1830s, where the sagas are translated into English and appear in America,

in the USA, the new state of the USA. A lot of interest. There's a pushback at this time

against the origin history linked to Christopher Columbus, who of course never made it

to North America anyway. And increasingly, people become interested in the USA, in the possibility

of the sagas. This is before archaeological evidence, you understand. There's a movement of Scandinavians

into the Midwest, particularly after the Civil War ends in 1865,

and we start to find runestones being discovered. The most famous one being Kensington in Minnesota,

but others turn up, as you say, we've got them from Maine, we've got them from Oklahoma,

we've got them from West Virginia, we've got it from a number of places. It's quite astonishing.

But the most famous one is the Kensington Roonstone.

And there are things about these runestones that make us almost certain that these are fakes, that they are forgeries.

And what they seem to be is, they seem to be designed to prove prior title to the land.

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