Radio Cadena Agramonte emisiora de Camagüey
Archaeologists have discovered that mysterious symbols engraved 200 years ago into a rock discovered in 2018 in the municipality of Wawa, in the Canadian province of Ontario, are the Lord's Prayer written in Swedish, according to CBC.
Photos of the discovery of 255 symbols and an image of a ship with 16 people on board, carved into a rock, caught the attention of Canadian archaeologist Ryan Primrose, director of the Ontario Archaeological Education Centre.
For seven years, Primrose has been working to decipher the engravings. He quickly realized the characters were Norse runes, part of an alphabet known as Futhark, used by Germanic peoples in Scandinavia in ancient times (such as the Vikings).
So, Primrose sought the help of runology expert and professor at Uppsala University in Sweden, Henrik Williams.
Williams realized that the writing spelled out the words of the Lord's Prayer in Swedish and traced the version back to a runic prayer from 1611, republished in the XIX century.
"It must have taken days of work. [The symbols] are carved very deeply into the rock. Someone must have spent a couple of weeks carving it, and it must have been a Swede," the professor asserted.
After research, Primrose discovered that the Hudson's Bay Company hired Swedes in the XIX century to work at trading posts in the Canadian wilderness, including one at Michipicoten, not far from where the stone was found.
Based on this, the archaeologist believes the engraving was made in the early to mid XIX century.
Primrose also speculates that the stone could have been a place of religious worship, perhaps a meeting place for Swedes who worked at nearby trading posts. (Text and Photo: Cubasí)
