Ave Maria Save Us from Evil

Question: Have you ever done anything with the Minnesota "Runestones"? I mean, either as some variant history that the Scionverse might have, or a joke made by Loki?

We have not, but that doesn't mean you guys can't! I assume you're talking about the Kensington Runestone, which was at some point created near Kensington, Minnesota and is purported to be the work of Viking explorers. It's an impressive object, a two-hundred-pound rock found in the late nineteenth century and supposedly dated to the fourteenth.

Its text is an old-timey horror story that reads as follows:

Eight Götalanders and 22 Northmen on an acquisition journey from Vinland far to the west. We had a camp of two shelters one day's journey north from this stone. We were fishing one day. After we came home, found ten men red from blood and dead. Ave Maria save from evil.
There are 10 men by the inland sea to look after our ships, fourteen days journey from this peninsula. Year 1362.

Now, the problem with the Kensington Runestone is that it's been widely decried as a forgery; while the family who found it swore its authenticity, others in the area claimed the family had made it themselves as a hoax, and linguists have found that its text sounds more like modern Scandinavian languages than those that would have been spoken in the fourteenth century (not coincidentally, the family that found it was distinctly Swedish). However, some scholars have argued that the stone is weathered enough to be several centuries old, and that the linguistic differences might be because it was carved by a joint expedition of Swedish and Norwegian settlers who might have spoken a variant dialect.

If the stone were authentic - which the overwhelming majority considers unlikely, but there are still arguments being had - it would be the earliest example of European settlement in North America in history, and prove point-blank that Viking explorers had come much further inland than had ever been supposed before. So here's a possible forgery of a purportedly ancient stone, telling a tale of gruesome, unexplained death in the tongue of the Norsemen. That sounds like a Scion plot hook no matter what you think, eh?

The Kensington Runestone might not be legitimately ancient, but that doesn't mean it can't be awesome for Scion. It could be a powerful relic of the Aesir, planted there for the Allfather's inscrutable purposes; it could be a hoax intended to confuse mortal historians as a joke; it could be a planted item intended to be used by the Aesir as proof that they totally have a right to control northern North America; it could be a warning against an ancient evil, carved by some Scion or mortal who had seen something too terrible to communicate. Whether you believe it's a hundred years old or seven hundred, the tale of something in the desolate northern woods, killing without a trace and leaving bloodied corpses in its wake, is a frightening plot just waiting to happen.

My personal vote for explanation is that some Aesir Scion - maybe in the fourteenth century, maybe as part of the family who created the hoax stone - moved onto North American turf on a mission from his pantheon, and encountered the chilling and destructive resistance of the Native American powers there. The wendigo are always hungry.

The possibilities are awful and endless.