Archaeologists have finally deciphered a 200-year-old code carved into a remote Canadian rock – and the results have stunned researchers.
The 255 mysterious symbols were discovered in 2018 when a tree fell and exposed a carefully carved inscription near the small town of Wawa in Ontario, just 155 miles from the US border in Michigan, reports the MailOnline.
Now, after years of analysis, archaeologist Ryan Primrose from the Ontario Center for Archaeological Education has revealed the markings are actually the Lord’s Prayer – written entirely in Swedish using ancient Nordic runes.
The religious message was an unexpected find in the Canadian wilderness. But further investigation revealed that Swedish workers had once been recruited by the Hudson’s Bay Company to man isolated trading posts in the 1800s – pointing to one of them as the likely author of the carving.
With no other artefacts found at the site, experts believe it may have served as a humble outdoor place of worship for the Scandinavian settlers.
During the 19th century, the Hudson’s Bay Company – a vast British fur trading network – was expanding rapidly across North America. In order to staff remote locations in Canada’s interior and the Pacific Northwest, they often turned to recruits from Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.
The symbols were carved inside a neat, square-shaped border etched into the stone, measuring approximately three feet by four feet. Nearby was a drawing of a boat encircled by 16 human figures – possibly representing the group of Swedes who made the journey to Canada centuries ago.
Primrose said the slab appeared to have been deliberately buried. “There were ruins covered by about six inches of soil,” he told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).
While the weathering of the rock suggests it could be several centuries old, scholars currently only have documented evidence of Swedish-speaking people being in the region around 200 years ago.
Henrik Williams, an emeritus professor at Sweden’s Uppsala University who helped decode the symbols, said: “Any runic inscription is rare. Someone put all this effort into this particular text and you wonder why. The mystery does not decrease just because of its age.”
Primrose added that he delayed going public with the discovery until he was fully confident in the translation. “This is certainly among the least expected finds I have encountered in my career,” he admitted.
The Lord’s Prayer, known to many Christians across the world, appears in the New Testament in two places – Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4 – and encapsulates key Christian beliefs, from seeking daily sustenance to the importance of forgiveness and resisting temptation.
In early Christian tradition, it was taught to new converts and recited during worship. Eventually, it became central to liturgy across all major branches of Christianity – Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant – and earned the nickname the perfect prayer.
Translated into countless languages, the prayer found in Canada is the Swedish version, reflecting both religious devotion and cultural identity.
Though the Bible was translated into Swedish in 1541, scholars say the use of runes in this inscription may have been a way to honour Scandinavia’s linguistic heritage – a striking blend of faith and history carved into stone, waiting to be found.