Scott Wolter

When the runestone was found...

There were 12 witnesses at least that saw the stone, the tree wrapped around the stone.

Now, they described the roots going over the back of the stone as being three and a half inches wide and flattened.

If you pull up a picture of the back of the runestone, you will see these white undulating and branching lineations.

They are scars from the roots when the tree was young.

Because what happens is, and I learned this from a plant physiologist, because when I looked at this, I said, well, wait a minute.

The witnesses said three and a half inches wide, but on the runestone, they're a maximum of a half inch wide.

This is a disconnect.

This is a problem.

Okay.

This is an outlier.

So I talked to a plant physiologist and he said to me, the active part of a root is the leading edge, the front edge.

And he said, after a while, as the tree grows and the root system expands, a bark forms over that root and the active part moves on.

Now, it's common for active roots to leach out iron and magnesium from dark-colored rocks, okay?

That's the pigment that makes the rock dark, iron and magnesium.

And that's also food for trees.

And so the white scars were caused by the active root leaching out these elements and making the scars, okay?

This is common.

And archaeologists said this is common.

Oh, that's the calcite on the back.