How did the mysterious figure originate?
Now, in the charming Yarmouth County Museum at 22 Collins Street, this stone is carefully preserved and prominently displayed to the public. Eric Ding Ruff is the curator and curator of the museum and a historian. He has rich and valuable information about this mysterious and ancient stone and its possible source. In a recent interview, he told reporters the following. During the interview, he allowed reporters to take notes. Moreover, this interview is very helpful to crack the characters and provides a lot of information.
In the history of Yarmouth, the mysterious stone in Yarmouth is a very interesting thing. Most people think it was left by the vikings, which is a general statement, but there are many other statements. Generally speaking, it was discovered by a doctor named Fretcher at the end of Yarmouth Port in 18 12. Some people, especially the descendants of Dr. Fretcher, always thought it was carved by Fretcher, because he was obviously a joker, and his family always thought it was him. Many people still think that the Vikings left this stone, which has been translated from old Scandinavian by different people several times. 1875 or so has a translation of Henry Phillips Jr. He thinks that those ancient Nordic characters are either written as "Hakou speaks to his crowd" or "Hakou's son speaks to his crowd". "
Later, in 1884, Phillips published a paper about that passage according to the notes of Harry Pierce, the former director of the provincial museum, and thought that this man named Hack was a member of the 1007 safin expedition in Vacart.
Eric Rafe also told reporters that in 1934, Oliver Strangwood had translated the ancient Nordic characters on the stone tablet. Strangwood's translation is particularly interesting in language. Oliver Strangwood is a school superintendent in Benton County, Washington, and an outstanding Norwegian scholar. He believes that writing is indeed an ancient Nordic writing. He translated them into: "Rafe aleko built this monument." "This monument" means what people understand in sentences. This old Scandinavian script itself does not contain it. The meaning of this understood grammatical structure can also be found when asking for help, such as "please help me get up from this ditch" Here, the meaning of "from this ditch" is very clear, because the callee can see the ditch and understand the speaker's situation-both of which make this completely understood sentence redundant! The actual existence of Yarmouth Rock, in a very similar way, makes it unnecessary to add "this monument". As Confucius may have written clearly in his epigram: "People who carve words on hard stones will choose fewer words than those who write on paper with pen and ink."
1934, when Oliver Strangwood was engaged in his work, George St. Palin was in charge of the stone and the Yarmouth Library where it was preserved at that time. 1934, George clearly wrote in his description of the stone to Oliver: "... there is no sign of corrosion. Except for a few isolated places, the sculpture shows obvious V-shaped parts ... This stone is very hard ... The sculpture is so exquisite that the sculptor must have used highly quenched tools ... "
Strangwood has done a very effective job, which is to carefully search for the known counterparts from the identified materials through the identified ancient Nordic letters, corresponding to the ancient Nordic characters engraved on the Yarmouth stone tablet. Then, he picked out the corresponding Nordic ancient characters and gave the Latin alphabet correspondence of the Nordic ancient characters above. Strangwood made several pages of cross-reference materials, and established and confirmed all the 14 ancient Nordic characters on the stone tablet. Finally, he got a Latin translation:
LAEIFRERIKUBISR
Considering the slight differences between ancient Nordic characters and Ogan characters carved from slightly different angles, there are striking similarities between the letters of Grohon in central France and the carved characters on Yarmouth stone.
In order to balance the opinions of various experts on the ancient Norse script fairly, it should be said that in 1966, that is, about 30 years after the publication of Stranwood's works, Dr. Listo of the Oslo Noske Institute expressed doubts about whether those engraved characters were ancient Norse scripts.
Julius Flasch Harmon put forward a completely different academic point of view on this issue in his paper entitled "Sculptures on Stones in Braxton and Yarmouth", which was published in the History of West Virginia, Volume 36, from 65438 to 1.976. Harmon believes that inscriptions are pure mathematics, and they are statistical data about the expedition ordered by King erico XIV of Sweden.
Eric Ralph went on to explain several other very interesting ideas. "There is an early Basque language saying that stone carvings mean:' Basques conquered this land', which may come from 350 BC. Mycenae's statement may have been earlier. It interprets this stone as' noble throne: at the peak of the flood, the royal purebred lions were sent to protect and control and dug a cave at sunset, and they were all killed'. I think it's incredible-how can you get that meaning from just a few old Nordic words: as you all know, I don't really believe it. Other proverbs include Japanese proverbs,14th century Scandinavian proverbs and roots. Therefore, readers are free to choose. I like it when my visitors come in and ask,' Is this true?' I said,' Yes, this is a real stone. We do have some questions about this stone. In the 1930s, a chairman of the historical society thought that the inscription was fading, so he chiseled the stone again, so we lost everything we could get from the original, even though we did have photos of the original. That's what happened anyway. This stone originally belonged to Yarmouth Public Library and has been borrowed by them since the museum opened in 1950s. "
"What I like to say is the Basque people's guess, because I got a Basque-French dictionary, and I found the ancient Nordic characters in a Basque book about the ancient Nordic characters. Therefore, I understand how they can equate those words with Basque. This means a lot to me: of course you can see Basque; Can see' people'; You can see land. 1895 or so, another stone was found in Yarmouth. There are ancient Nordic characters on it, just like the ancient Nordic stone we found. At that time, there were three letters below-the above words were translated into Basque, which means' Basques conquered this land and lived here'. There is some speculation about the stone, because it has just been found in a newly opened hotel in 1895, and the stone has been lost since then. "
"Our stone was discovered in 18 12, when people didn't even think of the vikings. Could be Viking's. I certainly don't doubt that the vikings have been here. I'm sure they may have been here. Of course they are in Newfoundland. "
This view is strongly supported by Bogita Voorhees. Wei Wei, 1995, who works in the German film group, once showed them the Viking ruins in the Lance Oaks grassland in Newfoundland. She thought it was an undeniable fact. Then, she took them to Nova Scotia without taking pictures of Yarmouth stone.
Eric went on to explain how stones crossed the Atlantic in World War I.
"This stone has been verified or translated in Britain. This was taken before the First World War. When it was ready to be returned, the war broke out, so people decided not to risk crossing the Atlantic in it. Obviously, during the First World War, it was in a packing box at the London pier. "
"People took some fragments from the back of the stone to identify the source of the stone. It may be good to think that it comes from somewhere in Scandinavia, but it is a local stone. "
Laura Bradley, a very helpful and knowledgeable archivist of Yarmouth County Museum, accepted a recorded interview: "I saw several researchers come here to see this stone. Early researchers and annotators couldn't actually see the stone, so they were processing photos and specimens, so they couldn't tell which natural marks were on the stone and which were artificial marks. One feedback is that the marks on the stone are naturally formed. It is difficult to identify, because the original complete inscription was confused by repeated carving, and it is difficult to view the stone marks in the same way. However, in the past six years, two geologists looked at this stone and told me that they didn't believe these traces were naturally formed. And our local expert, a real expert in this field in North America, said that those marks were not written in ancient Norse, but naturally formed. Therefore, we have qualified experts with opposite views.
"I can't draw a conclusion yet. I know this stone was discovered by 18 12, and the person who discovered it was a military doctor. Actually, I think it's very unlikely that he left these marks. However, when I talked with geologists, they felt that this was not a natural phenomenon, and when I talked with this Norwegian expert, he said that this was by no means an ancient Nordic script. I really think I want to express an informed opinion, but unfortunately, I can't do it at this point. This is one of Yarmouth's greatest mysteries. I've been reading the literature of these experts all my life. I really don't know how those traces got to that stone. It's a mystery to me. "
In short, the disputed ancient Yarmouth stone may have something to do with the actual history of the vikings? Eric with red hair, or Eric Thorvaldsson, succeeded to the throne at the end of 10, and was the founder of the earliest Scandinavian house in Greenland. His son, Rafe Eriksson, was the first European to discover North America completely credibly. In the spring of 19981,Eric with red hair went to the west with about 30 family members, friends, neighbors and a batch of livestock. Their Viking ship with corrugated shell is less than 30 meters long, so the conditions for sailing at sea must be very unfavorable. Due to the obstruction of drifting icebergs, they failed to land on the east coast, but bypassed the south end and sailed north along the west coast (now Julienne Haber). After finding their favorite land, they named it Greenland. Later, because of their praise of this land, enthusiastic people at that time formed an expedition, and 25 ships were full of potential colonists and livestock. In fact, only 14 ships, including 300 to 400 colonists, settled there, and this place was later called "Oriental Colony".
In 999, Eric's second son Rafe, known as Rafe Eriksson or Lucky Rafe, sailed from Greenland to Norway via hebrides. They didn't take the more common Icelandic route. The next year, on his way back, he didn't stop anywhere in the middle. I hope to reach the southernmost tip of Greenland. Because of the bad weather, he couldn't get there, but he saw the North American continent: maybe Labrador, maybe Newfoundland, or even Nova Scotia in the south. When he realized that it was not his father's home in Greenland anywhere, he turned north along the coast and got home safely before autumn. This intriguing question has never been answered: Did Rafe Eriksson land near Yarmouth, and when he was there, he carved this controversial stone?