Vikings in Oklahoma?
Yet Another American Roadside Attraction

Heavener, Oklahoma, from the top of Poteau Mountain.

by Doc Cuddy, Editor

Google has a lot to answer for, not least my recent foray into the wilds of southeastern Oklahoma.

"Wilds"? Sure. In Imperial America any place where the nearest Interstate highway is a hundred miles away and your digital cell phone falls silent qualifies as the wilds.

Months ago, some online search had led me to a site about the "Heavener Runestone State Park" in southeastern Oklahoma. "Heavener" we learn is a small town. Only when I finally got there and was chatting with a convenience store clerk did I by chance correct my mental pronunciation of the name. It is not pronounced like the name of the celestial realm but rather "HEEV-ner." Which takes a bit of the odd charm off the place.

But we still have the business of a "runestone state park."

Poteau Mountain, from Heavener, OK.

In the late 19th century, when what we now call Oklahoma was still Indian Territory, several people noticed this large stone (12 feet high, 10 feet wide, 16 inches thick) on top of Poteau Mountain (at whose base present-day Heavener sits) on which were carved eight definitely non-Latin-alphabet symbols.

In the 1920s a Heavener resident sent a query and a copy of the symbols to the Smithsonian. A Smithsonian offical replied that, while the symbols were runes, they didn't make sense and had probably been carved by someone working from a Scandinavian grammar book.

As time passed two other stones, smaller and with fewer characters, were found a few miles away.

Enter Gloria Stewart Farley. As a girl, in 1928 she had been taken to see the big stone. Enchanted by the strange object and its location (it doesn't just sit on top of the mountain but is rather in a 100-foot deep ravine), she grew up and made the stone her life's work.

Gloria Farley and sons at the stone, 1965.

It became Ms. Farley's theory that the Vikings a thousand years ago had not stopped in Newfoundland but had wandered down the Atlantic coast of North America, around Florida, into the Gulf of Mexico, up the Mississippi, and finally (for unknown reasons) had trekked overland in a westerly direction until they stopped at Poteau Mountain, Oklahoma.

With the fervor of the true believer, Ms. Farley searched, researched, interviewed, and wrote extensively about what she came to call "the Heavener Runestone." So infectious was her enthusiasm that local property owners donated land leading up the mountain and the site itself to the state of Oklahoma. A road was built and in 1970 the Heavener Runestone State Park was dedicated.

The stone itself is still in situ (though now enclosed in a large glass case). Entrance to the park with its small interpretive center is free. (The only problem is for the stair-challenged. Walking down to the stone is easy. The climb back is not.)

What do the runes say? There is disagreement. One translator sees in them a date ("November 11, 1012"). Another thinks the stone was a land claim, reading "Valley owned by Glome." Yet another theory dates the stone to the 17th century and errant wanderers from the ill-fated LaSalle expedition. And of course some think the whole thing is a hoax.

No one doubts that the Vikings were on the northeast coast of North America a millennium ago. The Kensington runestone in Minnesota indicates that maybe they made it that far inland in the 14th century.

Were they in Oklahoma too? Stand on top of Poteau Mountain, take in the lovely view of the valley and townlet below--"all the sounds of the earth are like music, the breeze is so busy it don't miss a tree"--and it's easy to imagine ancient, pagan eyes having also been attracted and enraptured by such a landscape.

END

Park Information.

Gloria Stewart Farley's page.

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