Seven years ago, a storm in the forests of northern Ontario uprooted a tree. What it revealed was no ordinary patch of bedrock, but something far weirder and more mysterious: a carefully carved inscription of the Lord’s Prayer — in ancient Scandinavian runes of all things.
The discovery, made near the remote town of Wawa and now confirmed to be the longest runic inscription in North America, has baffled and fascinated archaeologists. Though the site is believed to date to the early 1800s, its craftsmanship, content, and context raise as many questions as they answer.
“It’s certainly among the least expected discoveries of my career. It’s absolutely fascinating,” Ryan Primrose, president of the Ontario Centre for Archaeological Education, told CBC News.
Primrose has been studying the site since 2018. Only now is the team ready to share what they’ve learned — and what remains unexplained.
A Prayer Carved in Stone
The inscription measures roughly four by five feet. Within its chiseled border lie 255 runic symbols — characters from Futhark, the oldest known runic alphabet used by Germanic peoples, particularly in Scandinavia and Anglo-Saxon England, from about the 3rd to the 13th centuries.
Next to the prayer is a detailed depiction of a boat with 16 passengers. Fourteen “X” marks are carved nearby, their purpose unknown.
The runes are deeply etched, suggesting days or even weeks of labor. But from the start, Primrose worried about misinterpretation.
Given the ancient script, it would be easy to mistake site as a relic of the Viking age. After all, Norse explorers did reach parts of modern-day Canada over 1,000 years ago. The site at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, notably, remains the only confirmed Viking settlement in North America.
However, Primrose didn’t take the bait and opted for caution.
“We didn’t want to release anything publicly until we had done as much analysis as possible,” said Primrose.
To that end, he reached out to Dr. Henrik Williams, a leading expert in runology and emeritus professor at Uppsala University in Sweden.
Williams traveled to the site in October, braving cold rain and northern winds to kneel beneath a tarpaulin with only a flashlight and years of expertise.
“I was under a tarpaulin for three hours with a flashlight, looking at the runes while others were freezing outside,” Williams recalled. “And I came out with this reading.”
The symbols, he concluded, spell out the Lord’s Prayer in Swedish — using a runic script developed in the early 1600s by the Swedish scholar Johannes Bureus. Though the script had fallen out of popular use by the 1700s, it was republished in the 19th century.
And that detail turned out to be crucial. For one, it immediately ruled out Vikings.
A Swedish Footprint in the Wilderness
So, if not ancient Vikings, then who?
Historical records offered a clue. In the 1800s, the Hudson’s Bay Company employed Swedish laborers at various fur trading posts across Canada. One such post, Michipicoten, lies not far from where the carving was found.
“This must have been a Swede,” said Primrose. “Were there any Swedes at all here?”
Yes, there were. Enough to support the emerging theory: that the carving was the work of a Swedish trader or employee, creating a personal — or communal — devotional site far from home.
The site, buried beneath inches of soil, may have been intentionally concealed. And yet, the researchers found no other artifacts nearby. No crosses, no tools, no personal effects. Only the prayer, the boat, and those puzzling X marks.
“Why was it carved here? Why this text? There are no answers,” Williams told PopSci. “And mysteries always draw people in.”
Despite its relatively recent age and the mild disappointment at the lack of Vikings, Williams considers the site extraordinary.
“Canada now has a total of eleven objects claimed to bear runes, but only five in fact do so,” he wrote in his report. “The Wawa stone is Ontario’s first with actual runes, the longest runic inscription of any on the North American continent, and the only one in the world reproducing the Lord’s Prayer.”
A Heritage Site in the Making
Though some might be disappointed the carving is only 200 years old, archaeologists say its historical value is undiminished.
It captures a moment — or perhaps a series of moments — of faith, identity, and effort, carved into cold stone in a northern forest thousands of miles away from home.
“It must have taken days and days of work. They are really deeply carved into the rock,” Williams said.
So, what was the boat meant to represent? A voyage across the Atlantic? A biblical scene? Or a metaphor for the soul’s journey? And what about the 14 X marks — could they be graves, people, years?
“It’s difficult to tell what’s going on,” said Primrose. “The mystery doesn’t fade just because it’s younger than we hoped.”
Primrose and his team are now working with local landowners to protect the site. Plans are underway to secure a leasehold, apply for conservation funding, and construct a protective shelter. The hope is to open it to the public by summer’s end.
If successful, visitors could one day walk among the tall trees of Wawa and pause before a stone prayer whispered across centuries — a hidden message from a forgotten traveler, carved with care, now asking new questions of the present.
“Mysteries, they do tend to attract people,” said Williams. “And this one will certainly do that.”
