Monday, November 13, 2017

Naragansett Runestone

My parents and I took the 2 ½ hour trip from our house in Massachusetts to Newport, Rhode Island to see the Newport Tower. I remembered that the Narragansett Runestone was in the area so we stopped to see it before heading to Newport.

The Narragansett Runestone is located in Wickford (which is in North Kingstown), Rhode Island. The stone was moved from its original location “in the intertidal zone of Narragansett Bay just south of Pojac Point in North Kingstown, at 41O38.90N and 71O24.48W” (according to a kiosk at the rune stone) to an area behind Old Library Park next to the Town Hall Annex, in Wickford off of Brown Street. This will save it from the tidal erosion.

It was neat to see the runestone in person after reading about it online and in books. For the most part, the rune writing is carved maybe 1/2” deep into the rock and fades out at the right side of the sentence due to water erosion. As far as I know, nobody knows what the stone says even though there are recognizable runes that can be interpreted like the first three runes, the s, h, r, and a runes.