Poteau Runestone

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The Poteau Runestone was found by schoolboys in 1967. It is 15 inches long. There are seven characters in a straight line, l 1/2 to 2 inches high. The runes showed very plainly because the bottom of the grooves were in a lighter colored layer of the stone, while the surface was dark. Tool marks in the grooves showed that the letters had been made with a punch, like the Heavener Runestone. Four of the runes are duplicates of those on the Heavener Runestone, and three seemed to be variants of others on it. From the site of the Poteau runestone, the Heavener Runestone on the side of Poteau Mountain lies about 10 miles to the southeast. The original sites of Heavener Runestones Numbers Two and Three fall in a line between them.

The Poteau stone was transliterated "G-L-O-I-A-L-L-W", which would assign different values to several of the same characters. If the "G-N-O-M-E-D-A-L" character values from the Heavener stone are used, it would be "G-N-?-?-E-A-?-?. Expanding that in the Anglo Saxon rune set yields "G-?N-NG-I-E-A-L-?W". In Norse it is "?-A-?-I-?-?-?-?", with a number of characters that don’t exist in the Norwegian runes. In the Elder Futhark, this is "G-?-?-I- E-A-L-?". The seventh symbol on the Poteau Runestone is not in the standard runic alphabets but was a runic symbol for the numeral 17.

There are various theories regarding the Heavener and Poteau runestones. In 1967, Alf Monge, a former US Army cryptographer asserted that all of the cryptic runic messages in North America and those found in Stave Churches in Norway, contain codes deciphered as dates of church holidays. His solution to the Poteau inscription is November 11, 1017 A.D., exactly five years later than the date he said was on the Heavener Runestone. This is discussed in two books by O.G. Landsverk: "Runic Records of the Norsemen in America", Erik J Friis Publisher (1974), and "Ancient Norse Messages on American Stones", Norseman Press (1969), and in Earl Syversen's "Norse Runic Inscriptions: with their long-forgotten cryptography", Vine Hill Press.