Scott Wolter

And remember I told you about that word that had that stroke that the scholars have studied with?

It's a tell, which means pay attention to me.

I'm important.

Remember the eight?

Well, at the end of the second bar is a punch mark.

Purposeful, clearly intentional, and if they put it there, it means something.

After I figured out the rune, you know, I was convinced by the evidence that the runestone was an authentic artifact.

I decided that I was going to do a photo library of the entire inscription.

And I took pictures with low angle and high angle reflected light to pull out the three dimensionality.

And then I made a catalog of all of them.

And as I was doing that, I started finding these punch marks and short strokes, clearly intentional.

And if they put them there, they meant something.

And so I put them in a separate folder called Odd Runes.

And then afterwards, I went through this with Dick Nielsen, the guy that I co-wrote that book with, who was an expert on medieval Swedish language and runes and dialect and the whole thing.

And we figured out that there were codes.

One of the codes is a dating code.

The eight was singled out, the L was singled out, and the last thing in the inscription was the U in the word illu, which is saved from evils.

Illu is evils.

So we've got the first thing in the inscription singled out, the last thing singled out, alpha, omega, beginning and end, maybe.

And then the L. Well, it turns out when I was over in Sweden, I learned that they used to date these grave slabs and bells and churches using something called the medieval Easter table dating method.