EDWARD LARSSON'S RUNE LISTSThe number symbols had been used as equivalents for normal Arabic decimal numbers, to write dates for the two documents; the first by Edward's elder brother, dating from 1883, the second, a neater copy of the first, his own from 1885. The documents presented two different sets of historical runes- a variant of the traditional "futhark" with 22 symbols, and an alphabet of 27 symbols, including accented letters, designed for tranliterating text written in the modern alphabet. What is rather disturbing is that (as well as the pentadic numbers) the documents also presented a third alphabet, described by Larsson as a secret style, the oldest in the world, which had been used to write the tablets of the Law. We're not talking Moses here; the third alphabet was what is nowadays often called the "Masonic Cipher". It looks as if the teenage Edward, then an apprentice tailor, was introduced to the world of Freemasonry.  Any mention of Freemasonry in discussion of a probable conspiracy is unfortunate; in this case it's doubly so. The familiar Masonic emblem of the setsquare and compasses can (apparently legitimately) be interpreted as a monogram- for the same formula "AVM" (also seen written in Masonic literature as AUM) which, as discussed elsewhere on this site, unexpectedly appears in conventional non-runic letters on the Kensington stone. In a way it's all too neat- a conspiracy involving at least one Swedish Freemason, who both provides the runic script and incorporates into the stone's text a clue that will be understood by all other Freemasons, who should then do what they can to keep the stone from harm. Make of it what you will...Much of the information given above is derived from discussions on the Internet newsgroup soc.history.medieval, but two essays from Tryggve Sköld of DAUM, who spotted the Larsson connnection, are available in their magazine DAUM-KATTA 13 (1.2Mb pdf). I've prepared an illustration of the KRS text with the Larsson equivalents for each character: red for runes from the first runerow, green for runes from the second "modern" runerow, purple-blue for runes which are effectively the same on both runerows, and yellow for the pentadic numbers (note, by the way, that the pentadic symbol the Larssons identified as "0" was actually placed after the symbol for "9" indicating that it is really meant to be used the way 0 is in long numbers, to denote multiples of 10). Overall, there are only six characters which are significantly different, on the KRS from the Larsson runes: "o" is mirror-reversed; "v" uses a dot instead of a little hook in the left fork; "p" lacks the dots in the two loops; "ö" and "ü" both have lines crossing the vertical shaft; and "g" combines the left-fork of the second Larsson runerow with the dot of the g in the first Larsson row (so I've shown both Larsson g runes together in the illustration). A new book by Scott Wolter, the petrologist who studied the weathering of the Stone, and Richard Nielsen, who analysed the text and runeforms, has met the Masonic "problem" very ingeniously, by tackling it head-on. Rather than try to deny the possibility of secret Masonic links, the authors have taken a leaf (or several) out of "The da Vinci Code" and produced an elaborate theory involving the alleged forerunners of the Freemasons, the Knights Templar. In full, this theory depends on the claim by Wolter that his detailed examination of the stone has indicated that certain apparently natural or accidental marks on it are really secret signs highlighting specific letters in the runic text. My own examination of detailed photos of the stone with lighting from various angles suggests that Wolter may be a victim of his own fascination with the stone, and of the natural human tendency to look for meaning and order in whatever we see. |
