Scott F. Wolter

Scott F. Wolter is a Minnesota geologist who was hired in 2000 by a supporter of the "Kensington Runestone" (also known as the "Kensington Stone") to test the surface of the stone, which was discovered by Olof Ohman in 1898 buried under a tree on his farm near Kensington, Minnesota - this according to Ohman's testimony. The stone is a 202 pound piece of greywacke rock with a message carved in purported Scandinavian runes about an exploratory journey to America in the year 1362, long before Columbus came to America.

Scott Wolter brought the Kensington Stone to his company, American Petrographic Services in St. Paul, for the investigation. With a scanning electron microscope he and his staff found mica degradation on the man-made surfaces. Although there is no geologically-defined standard for rates of mica degradation, Wolter asserted that his investigation clearly indicated the stone was buried at least 50 years after carving. He also drilled a core sample from the back of the Kensington Stone, with permission from the Runestone Museum.

Previous geologic investigation, which consisted of visual inspection only and no chemical testing, was done in 1909-10 by Minnesota's State geologist, Newton Horace Winchell. At the time, when there was little hard evidence by which to interpret Viking presence in the New World, Winchell stated that "there was strong support for an authentic Runestone date of 1362 and little reason to suspect fraud".Fact|date=February 2007

Wolter became intrigued with the Kensington Stone mystery and visited the Minnesota Historical Society to examine Winchell's field notes and study Ohman family correspondence, as did researcher Barry J. Hanson and avid Scandinavian linguist and runologist Richard Nielsen. In 2004 Nielsen and Wolter travelled with the stone to the historical museum in Stockholm, Sweden. Wolter and Nielsen joined forces in authoring "The Kensington Runestone: Compelling New Evidence" in 2005.

References

*Barry J. Hanson, "Kensington Runestone: A Defense of Olof Ohman the Accused Forger", Volumes I&II, Morris Publishing, 2002.

*Alice Beck Kehoe, "The Kensington Runestone: Approaching a Research Question Holistically", Waveland Press, 2005.

[http://www.kensingtonrunestone.com/ Nielsen-Wolter 2005 publication]