Original subtitles

[ Food plops ]

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WOLTER: The history that we were all taught growing up is wrong.

My name is Scott Wolter, and I'm a forensic geologist.

There's a hidden history in this country that nobody knows about.

There are pyramids here, chambers, tombs, inscriptions.

They're all over this country.

We're gonna investigate these artifacts and sites,

and we're gonna get to the truth.

Sometimes history isn't what we've been told.

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[ Computer beeps ]

[ Mouse clicks ]

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[ Ringing ]

ATKINS: Hello?

Hello, is this Harry Atkins?

Speaking.

Hi, Harry. This is Scott Wolter. How are you?

I'm doing great.

Good. Say, I was just looking at your e-mail,

and these artifacts are very intriguing.

I've looked at Viking artifacts before

but never Viking artifacts found in Arizona.

I'd really be interested in taking a look at them.

Is that possible?

It sure is.

Great. I look forward to meeting you in person.

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WOLTER: The Vikings were some of the fiercest warriors of all time,

hailing from Scandinavia,

a rugged landscape far different from where I am now.

They earned their reputation for battle rage and bloodlust

on countless raids across England

between the 8th and 11th centuries.

They soon set their sights on lands further west

from the fjords and forests they called home,

not to raid, but for one simple reason --

overpopulation.

If Harry Atkins' dad really has authentic Viking artifacts

found in Arizona,

it could be the first step in figuring out

if this is one place they settled.

Harry, good to meet you.

Nice to meet you.

Well, you picked a fantastic place to meet.

I mean, this is a geologist's paradise.

Chemical conditions caused this iron oxide to form in the rocks,

and now it's weathering out, producing beautiful red colors.

You don't see that too many places.

Speaking of things you don't see too often --

Viking artifacts that your father found.

Well, my dad actually didn't find them.

He owned an antique shop and an art gallery.

A woman came to him and said,

"Hey, I found these things

out on the desert around Sedona out hiking,

and you're into old things.

Here. why don't you take them?"

And he was very intrigued, and she told him,

"Well, I found them in what looked like

a rotted pair of saddlebags."

He started doing some Internet research,

and based on some of the designs

on the largest of the artifacts,

he thought that perhaps they were Viking.

It's not unheard of that people find things out in the desert,

but Viking artifacts, that's a whole nother ball game.

So the question is, "How did they get here?"

That is the question,

and I'm hoping you can get the answer.

So, your father passed, right?

Yes, he passed in 2017.

He wanted you to look into these things, so here we are.

I would love to get the answers for you and your father.

Can we take a look at the artifacts?

We sure can.

There's a woman named Bonnie that worked for my dad,

and she's got the artifacts right now.

Lead the way. All right.

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A Viking find out here would be unprecedented.

Wow.

The Viking sagas talk about a place called Vinland.

Vinland has never been conclusively identified.

They know it's in North America.

Some people think it's on the northeast coast,

and that does make some sense,

but that doesn't mean that they're right.

WOLTER: There is a confirmed Viking settlement

in Newfoundland, which I've seen,

but one thing archaeologists agree on

is that it's not Vinland.

They've concentrated their efforts to find Vinland

on the East Coast of the United States

because that's where some intriguing things

have already been found, including a stone in the sea

off the coast of Martha's Vineyard

inscribed with the name of the Viking's

most notorious explorer, Leif Erikson.

And I think the geology suggests

it could have been carved at the time of his voyage

across the Atlantic.

But if Harry's artifacts are authentic,

maybe we should be looking here, 2,500 miles further west.

If these Viking artifacts

that your dad came into are genuine,

maybe Vinland is out here.

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Hi, Bonnie.

Hi. Nice to meet you, Scott.

Apparently, you're the one that knows

where these artifacts were found.

Well, we don't know exactly where they were found --

just somewhere in this area.

WOLTER: It's too bad we don't have an exact location

because we might be able to find

even more artifacts still buried,

something that could bolster the provenance of this cache

because their archaeological context

could be studied and proven.

But this is still an amazing find,

and there are other ways to explore the possibility

the Vikings left these here if they appear authentic.

WOLTER: [ Laughing ] Wow!

Incredible.

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They all have a very similar look to them.

Do you notice this green material

that's covering pretty much all of them, it looks like?

-Yeah. -Yeah.

That's a copper carbonate,

and that's produced by weathering of the metal,

which tells me that there's copper in here,

as well as other metals.

When either bronze or brass oxidizes,

it'll produce this green coating on here.

It's called a patina.

That's always been the interesting piece of the bunch.

ATKINS: Have you seen anything like that before?

You know what? Actually, I have.

Let me show you some pictures.

This is Sweden, Scandinavia,

and that is Gotland,

which is an island in the middle of the Baltic Sea.

And Viking artifacts

have been found on the island of Gotland

for literally centuries.

They're all over.

Here's one that's kind of shaped like this guy right here.

See how the end comes straight out?

That's very similar.

Now, this one looks almost [Laughing] exactly

like this guy right here. Wow. Look at that.

♪♪

Now, here's an interesting artifact.

That is a broach that was worn by Viking-age women.

That one right there looks a lot like this one.

You know what? Actually, it does.

You're right.

Did Vikings bring their women along on these journeys?

The Viking Sagas talk about women

coming over here to the new world.

How do you think they actually got in this area?

It's far from the sea.

WOLTER: I explain to Harry and Bonnie

that in ancient times, much of the arid Southwest

was actually a lake,

and a giant lake at that,

called Lake Cahuilla.

Today, all that's left is the Salton Sea

in California's Imperial and Coachella Valleys.

The Vikings, who we know were sailing west

looking for new lands to settle,

could have gotten to this part of the country

by coming through the Northwest Passage,

around Alaska,

down the coast of California, around Baja,

into the Gulf of California,

and then straight up into the U.S.

Sedona is still a ways from the edge of the ancient lake,

but the Vikings could have traveled here on foot

in search of a place to settle.

WOLTER: I mean, this would be unprecedented

if they actually did come here back at that time.

Okay.

WOLTER: There is, of course, another possibility

of how Bonnie and Harry's artifacts

ended up here that I have to point out.

The other possibility

is that these artifacts were collected

by somebody within the last 150 years,

and they were brought over maybe with immigrants

from Scandinavia.

WOLTER: Starting in the 1830s, millions of Swedes,

Danes and Norwegians,

including some of my ancestors, moved to the United States.

But it's a fact that most of them

settled in the Midwest where I'm from

and where the climate was similar

to what they left back home, not the Southwest.

All I know right now is these things look authentic,

but there are ways to tell for sure.

WOLTER: As great as this looks,

you have to tap the brakes just a bit.

There is a black market

where people are making artifacts like this,

and they're really good at making them look authentic.

But one of the ways that we can tell the difference

between something that is authentic

and something that's modern

is by using something called an XRF gun.

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WOLTER: XRF stands for X-ray florescence

and is a critical tool

in assessing the authenticity of artifacts.

A gun like this can reveal what metals

objects like these are made of.

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WOLTER: The Vikings used crude forges.

I expect that we're probably gonna see copper and zinc,

but it also should have some secondary elements

like iron, tin, and lead.

Let's start with this guy right here.

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The suspense is killing you, right?

[ Both laugh ]

[ Laughing ] Oh!

Do you know what we have here?

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WOLTER: Over 10% copper. Over 10% zinc.

Lead, 3.42%.

Iron and a little bit of silver.

These results are very consistent

with known Viking-age artifacts,

so I really like what we're seeing here.

Even though I love these test results

and they appear to be authentic,

that isn't everything.

I'd really like to sit down with a professor I know.

She teaches at Oxford in the U.K.,

one of the top experts in Viking artifacts,

and she'll know if these are authentic artifacts or not.

Is it okay if I take them with me?

Sure. Yeah.

Promise I'll bring them back.

Maybe we'll finally have an answer

for your dad and for you guys.

Sounds great. Okay, thank you.

Sounds great, thank you.

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WOLTER: Before I go any further with this investigation

into whether the Vikings made a trip to the Southwest,

I need to know if these artifacts are authentic.

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Well, Dr. Kershaw -- Is Jane okay?

That's fine, yeah.

What I want to talk to you about today

is what you think of these artifacts.

Does the style and what you see here

look like they could be Viking?

Yeah, sounds good.

WOLTER: First things first -- I show Jane the data

from the XRF testing I did in the field.

I find the test results promising, and she agrees.

Certainly, they look very consistent.

It's the results we would expect

for early medieval artifacts,

but there's no substitute for actually having a look

at the items themselves.

And they're not big, as you can see.

They're always so much smaller than you think they are.

[ Laughing ] Oh.

♪♪

Okay, interesting.

This is a Viking-age broach.

Really?

Women would have worn these in pairs on the shoulder...

Right.

...right about here.

They're really distinctive animal art.

They came into Scandinavia around about 800.

This is definitely 10th century.

That's incredible.

And so how about this guy here?

This is the bottom plate

of a very particular type of broach

known as a box broach.

WOLTER: Viking women wore box broaches

to secure their shawls at their collars.

♪♪

Well, so far, you're batting a thousand.

I'm very curious to see what else there is.

We have several pieces here.

This is a crossbow broach

that was really popular with the Roman military elites,

so it's not Vikings.

It's a little bit earlier than that.

So older than Viking?

Definitely older than Viking -- 3rd, 4th century A.D.

A.D., okay.

They would have been trade objects worn by men.

Well, that's interesting.

This is a mix of things from a wide time period.

WOLTER: Because some of the artifacts are older than Viking,

it's possible they took them from lands they raided

to add to their collection,

like souvenirs or trophies,

though there is no way to know for sure.

One thing that is certain,

Bonnie and Harry do have some authentic Viking artifacts.

There are some clear Viking-age pieces.

These ones are Viking-age, 10th century.

So, I'm satisfied with all of your conclusions,

but the big question is how did these artifacts

in that saddlebag get in the desert in Arizona?

It's quite interesting that it's found in North America

'cause it's quite rare, really, for that to happen.

It does make me wonder

whether the Scandinavian migrations

to the Midwest in America

might have something to do with the story.

If you have kind of family treasures,

family heirlooms that get passed down

and then somebody emigrates,

leaves Scandinavia, ends up in America,

maybe that's a partial explanation for this.

WOLTER: Dr. Kershaw's theory is certainly plausible

and one that I'm already considering,

but I also know Viking voyagers

could have brought these over themselves

if ancient Lake Cahuilla was deep enough.

In addition to telling Bonnie and Harry

that their artifacts are legit,

I'd like to tell them more definitively how they got there.

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I've come to Travertine Point in southern California.

Today, this giant rock outcrop

is just a mile away from the iconic Salton Sea.

Over 1,000 years ago,

it would have been in the northwest quadrant

of Lake Cahuilla's 2,000 square mile spread.

I'm climbing high atop this outcrop

to look for a porous rock called tufa,

which only exists in places once covered with water.

It doesn't take me long to find some,

which proves the water level was high enough for the Vikings

to have used this lake to get inland to the Southwest.

And that's good news because there's a legend

of a Viking ship doing exactly that.

I've asked a man who's spent over a decade

researching the fascinating tale to meet me here.

John? Scott.

Good to meet you. [ Laughing ] Nice to meet you.

Can I join you? Sure, have a seat.

[ Grunts ]

So, John, I understand you're the guy that knows

about this Viking ship buried in the desert out here?

Yes, I've spent years, decades even,

chasing down this story.

I just came from looking at a cache of artifacts

that look authentic.

They also look like they might be Viking.

In the Southwest you found this?

In Sedona.

Oh, my God!

You see this right here? Mm-hmm.

This is the tufa that's coating this granite.

Okay.

Take this diluted hydrochloric acid

and just drop it on the surface.

You see how it reacts? Oh, wow! The fizzing.

That's the tufa.

That's the secondary deposit that grew on this granite

when the water level was up higher.

That proves it was under water then.

Based on this, there's no question that the water level,

the lake was absolutely up this high.

WOLTER: It's possible someone, like a cowboy,

found Harry Atkins' artifacts

somewhere in the dried-up lake bed

and put them in his saddlebag,

which is how they were originally found.

WOLTER: This lake level would have been high enough

for a Viking ship to have been able to come in here.

Geologically and geographically,

the pieces are really coming together.

Well, you know what I would really like to do?

Find that ship. Me too.

Where do you think the location of this Viking ship is?

Not far at all

in a town called Imperial, California,

and the town location

would have been almost dead center

of the southern part of Lake Cahuilla.

Okay. Well, that's gonna be the next stop.

Well, I'd love to tag along with you,

but there's a stop to make first.

What's that?

Scott, I want you to hear from an eyewitness

who actually saw the ship.

An eyewitness? Yes.

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John, you're telling me there was an eyewitness

who actually saw this Viking ship?

When did he see it?

In the early 1900s.

The guy's name is Elmer Carver.

He recorded what he saw in 1964,

then he died shortly after.

Primary-source material is always the golden thread.

So, what did he see?

Around 1907, Elmer Carver worked for a local farmer

by the name of Niles Jacobsen.

And when he went to Jacobsen's farm,

the first thing he noticed that the boards on the hog pen

were really long, really thick,

and were held up by pegs instead of nails.

So he goes, "Well, that's odd."

And he asked Jacobsen about it,

and Jacobsen says, "Oh, I get them from ship."

And he goes, "What are you talking about, a ship?"

Didn't really go into detail over it right then and there,

but Jacobsen showed him all the chores he had to do,

then the next day, Carver went out

and looked at the ship.

That's when he found out what it was.

So, he actually saw it?

Physically touched the ship.

Nobody has really listened to the tape

other than the guy who owns the tape and myself,

but I've been granted the extreme special permission

to allow you to listen to the tape.

Well, I sure appreciate that.

The only issue with this

is it's a very old reel-to-reel recording.

WOLTER: John only got the tape recently

and hasn't had it transferred over to a more modern medium.

After you, pal. Thank you.

WOLTER: Good thing we found Simply At Home Antiques,

and the shop let us use their reel-to-reel player.

Aha!

♪♪

As we're putting on this reel with Elmer Carver's testimony,

I can't believe I'm going to be one of only a couple people

to ever hear it.

I'm really hoping there are clues

that could lead us to the ship.

♪♪

CARVER: I had gone out and looked at this...wreck of the boat.

That was a peculiar looking thing.

About 200 foot... in back of the house.

WOLTER: About 200 feet.

Well, if we can find out where the house was...

GRASSON: That's the key.

That's what I've been searching for for years.

There was a bow of the boat all just stuck up

about six foot out of the ground.

The stern post...that stuck up

about maybe four feet above the ground.

And then along each were the ribs of the boat,

so it looked like a skeleton.

But some of the ribs were missing.

Also on that hog pen was some kind of looked like metal,

and I've always wondered where he got that metal.

But I think that was some of the sheathing off of that ship.

Metal could have been on the front of the ship, on the bow,

when they were going through the Northwest Passage.

Didn't even think about that.

Protect it from ice.

WOLTER: Elmer's account of the ship goes on for 45 minutes.

It sounds like the ship was 50 to 60 feet long

and was broken apart by Niles the farmer,

who used its wood and metal for the hog pen

and other things on his property.

Over time, the ship was simply forgotten...

♪♪

...more legend than anything else.

♪♪

Well, Elmer is a very interesting firsthand witness.

I mean, he definitely saw the ship.

That is critical, and for the most part,

I thought he sounded really credible.

He provides a lot of details.

I mean, you know, the bow was sticking up

six feet above the ground after the storm uncovered it.

I liked the fact

that he said that there was a mound before.

It was uncovered.

He saw the ribs of the ship.

He said it's 200 feet behind the house.

I mean, we've got a lot of details here to follow up on.

Absolutely.

I also like he mentioned the metal.

I mean, if it was all wood, that's one type of a search,

but if there's metal involved,

well, that opens up a whole bunch of other things

like metal detecting.

And if that ship is truly a Viking ship

that came here 1,000 years ago,

that rewrites the whole history book.

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WOLTER: John and I picked up plat maps

at the local property records department

and together try to figure out

exactly where Niles Jacobsen's property was located

to narrow down an area where the ship might be.

This is a 1908 survey map,

and this shows all the farm and ranch areas

that were east of Imperial.

Jacobsen owned one, two, three, four,

five, and six properties. Okay.

But you have to match that up

with what Carver said on the tape, as well --

what year, what time --

'cause he didn't buy all this property at the same time,

and that leads us to tract 164.

So, you think this is the tract

where he saw the ship 200 feet behind the house? Yes.

So, you know what we have to do now?

What's that? We have to figure out

who owns that property today.

♪♪

♪♪

After making a few calls, John and I learned

that the Jacobsen house that used to be there

isn't standing anymore.

But we know where it would have been,

and we find out a family of dairy farmers,

the Schaffners, own the farm today.

♪♪

Hello. How can I help you gentlemen?

You look like a guy with an open mind.

Uh, I don't know.

[ Laughs ] Well, I'm a forensic geologist,

and I investigate mysteries all over the United States.

We're investigating this whole possibility

that maybe Vikings could have come

into the Southwest area here,

as you know, living in this area,

that there was a giant lake here at one time.

That is true.

Have you ever heard the legend of a Viking ship

buried in the desert somewhere around here?

I actually have.

We think it might be on your property.

You think it's on our property?

Well, we're pretty convinced that it is.

♪♪

Here's the tract -- number 164 --

where we think that this Viking ship could be.

Is that your property?

Yeah, it is.

Well, John and I just listened to a recording

where we heard a firsthand witness tell us

that there was a residence here, and 200 feet north,

he said he saw a Viking ship.

Really?

What do you think?

Well, I've heard the legend before,

but I never thought in a million years it would be on our farm.

Here's what we'd like to do.

We'd like to bring in a geophysicist

with a magnetometer,

and he would scan the property in our area of interest,

and if we do find some anomalies, we'd like to dig.

You want to help us find a Viking ship?

SCHAFFNER: Well, I got a backhoe.

I'd be more than happy to play in the dirt with you guys.

♪♪

♪♪

WOLTER: I'm going to need help scanning below the ground

for anything unusual to find a good spot to dig,

so I reached out to geophysicist Patrick Lehrmann,

who has tools to detect anomalies

that suggests things deeply buried.

I've updated him on everything we've learned so far.

Hey, Patrick.

WOLTER: And it didn't take a lot of persuading

to get him out here to help.

Now, remember, we're talking about a wooden ship,

and there were two kinds of Viking ships

back about 1,000 years ago.

There was a knarr, and then the long boat style

that had the dragon on the front that everybody is familiar with.

Viking long ships were the enviable vessels of the sea

between the 8th and 11th centuries.

Designed with a shallow hull,

they were capable of reaching speeds of 15 knots

or 17 miles per hour.

These sleek ships were both sturdy enough

to navigate rough seas,

but light enough to be carried over portages as needed.

And knarrs were sturdy cargo ships

capable of carrying the spoils of Viking raids

up to 75 miles per day.

There was a piece of metal

reportedly found along with the wood.

We're thinking there was copper or brass or bronze sheets

that were put on the front of the ship to protect it from ice.

So you might encounter wood, metal, who knows what else.

LEHRMANN: I brought a number of different pieces of equipment,

but I think that we should start with the magnetometer.

We can cover a lot of ground with that fairly quickly.

I think our first stage should be to look

for any anomalies we see over a larger area,

and then when we find some targets,

we should then focus on those

with a couple of other instruments, including the GPR.

Well, Patrick, let's get after it.

♪♪

We're covering six acres with the magnetometer,

which can detect metals,

and using the GPS in the exact spot

where Elmer Carver said he saw this ship.

[ Equipment beeping ]

I hear plenty of beeping,

but we won't know what might be underground

until we download the data to Patrick's computer,

which takes just a few minutes.

LEHRMANN: Finished processing the data,

and I made a map of what I found.

The bright colors, the reds and the fuchsia and yellow,

those are anomalies.

It's in the Southwest corner

where you thought the farmhouse would be

and potentially where the buried ship

was supposed to be, as well.

So, basically, this little rectangle here

is this strip right here.

Yeah, it's about 200 feet long and extends 200 feet

from where we started over here.

This almost looks like the ribs of the ship.

♪♪

♪♪

[ Birds chirping ]

Look at how it's got these -- they look like ribs of a ship.

Possibly.

But then right in the middle,

which could be the keel of our Viking ship,

it looks like we got a hot spot.

Maybe that's where the metal was close to the keel.

This is incredible.

I mean, do you really expect to find something like this?

I mean, this is absolutely cool.

Hell, yes, I expected to find something.

Okay, so now this is getting scary. [ Laughs ]

No, now it's getting fun.

I mean, this is just like we heard on the tape,

exactly like Elmer said on the reel-to-reel.

I'm gonna get on the phone,

get Chase out here with that backhoe.

♪♪

WOLTER: One of the challenges with scans like these

is that sometimes very small solid objects

appear much larger on screen,

but I'm hoping for a very big find.

♪♪

Yeah, just clean it out, and then we're good.

♪♪

We should just dig through here and see what we find,

if there's anything that might create that anomaly.

We might take the instrument out

and see if we have any responses here.

♪♪

[ Metal detector chirping ]

♪♪

♪♪

WOLTER: It's important to go through the piles of dirt

that Chase is dumping to ensure that nothing gets by us.

What the hell is that?

Do you think it's wood?

You know what? This is not wood.

This is clay.

You see on the side, those little pieces there?

Let's go in and look at that.

Well, this is material that was at the bottom of the lake.

Do you see how it's got those lines?

Yeah.

They look like varves that you see in old lakes.

WOLTER: The fact that we're finding these varves

means the lake came this far into Imperial, California.

But what about the ship?

This is the lake bottom right here going all the way down.

This is hardpan clay.

If the ship was here, okay,

it would be probably in this zone here

sitting on top of the mud.

It doesn't make any sense to go deeper

because this would have been pretty hard mud,

and if the ship was sticking up out of the ground...

It wouldn't have been any further down.

Well, it certainly wouldn't be deeper than this.

Yeah.

Well, you're convinced that the anomaly

that you got is metal, and it's here somewhere.

Yeah, it has to be.

Why don't you take the metal detector.

Let's do the piles. Go through them carefully.

Sounds great.

[ Metal detector chirping lightly ]

♪♪

[ Chirping intensifies ]

Hey [Laughing] Scott.

I got something here.

[ Chirping continues ]

♪♪

Here, hand me that shovel.

[ Chirping continues ]

[ Strained ] All right. Yep.

[ Grunts ]

[ Chirping intensifies ]

♪♪

That felt like metal.

Yep, there's something there.

Wait, what is that? Listen.

[ Shovel thuds ]

Did you hear that?

What is it?

[ Laughing ] Oh!

♪♪

♪♪

That's a piece of rebar.

So you're confident this was our anomaly that we hit here?

I'm sure this is what we were seeing.

It's disappointing. We had good data.

WOLTER: So, how did a small piece of rebar show up

as such a huge reading on Patrick's magnetometer?

Turns out, the answer is simple,

but it's also over our heads.

It's power lines.

They can sometimes cause interference

in geophysical data.

In this case, I think the magnetometer

picked up the electricity coursing through these lines,

leading us to believe we'd be finding something much larger.

Hey, Chase.

Thanks for letting me put some holes in your property.

I appreciate it. No problem. It was fun.

Maybe next time, we'll find a Viking ship.

Yeah, next time.

♪♪

WOLTER: Well, John [Sighs] we gave it our best effort,

and as you can see... no Viking ship.

I'm happy that we're here.

I'm happy that you gave it a shot.

Only thing I can say is it's just not here.

It doesn't mean it's not here.

It's just not here.

And I'm very happy with what you've done.

Thank you very much.

Well, you're quite welcome,

and I'm not gonna give up on this story

just because we didn't find a ship.

I'm not done yet.

♪♪

♪♪

I'm crossing the Mexican border into Baja California

where the Seri Indians have a legend of a longboat

arriving on their shores

carrying strange tall people with yellow hair.

And the front of their boat was shaped like a dragon.

The Seris even immortalized the legend

by carving what they saw in stone.

I've only ever seen a picture of the petroglyph,

but I've called a local historian

to lead me to it so I can try to date it.

If it's old enough, then maybe the Seri Indians

witnessed a band of Vikings that could have carried

Harry Atkins' artifacts into the desert.

This petroglyph that we're gonna look at is so important,

and I'm really anxious to see it.

So, tell me a little bit more about it.

What it shows is that the native people,

from over 1,000 years ago perhaps,

saw this ship go by, and it moved them so much

that they had to inscribe it into rock.

Well, this wouldn't be the first petroglyph of a ship

that looked to be European

carved by Native Americans that I've seen.

There's actually one right near the shore of Lake Superior

up in the U.P. of Michigan.

WOLTER: The ship carving has the same square-shaped sail

as the petroglyph I'm about to check out in Baja.

In the past, I've also considered whether that ship

was Minoan, a Mediterranean culture

that used a sail similar to the Vikings.

But I think both carvings could be evidence that not one,

but multiple Viking voyages

ended far into the lands of the new world.

♪♪

Look at the size of that thing.

Yeah. And they get bigger.

♪♪

Watch your footing.

I'll take a bullet if there's a rattlesnake.

♪♪

♪♪

Oh [Laughing] there it is.

♪♪

This sticks out like a sore thumb.

I see a ship, I see the curved bow,

and it looks like it could be a Viking ship.

You've got what looks like a sail

standing on a vertical mast

right in the middle that has upturned front end

and an upturned back end.

Just look at the detail that went into the sail,

and something definitely stood out

with these people on what they saw.

That almost looks like a tongue,

or water coming out of the mouth of a dragon, or a snake.

♪♪

Take a look at this.

You can see the bow of the ship.

There's your rectangular sail, a single mast.

You've got the dragon on the front.

It looks very, very similar.

WOLTER: What I'm most interested in is this petroglyph's age.

The Vikings were exploring around the year 1,000 A.D.

If this petroglyph is as old as that, it could be a connection.

WOLTER: Obviously, scholars and academics have looked at this.

How old do they say this is?

They've dated it approximately 1,000 to 1,500 A.D.

Well [Laughing] that's right in our wheelhouse

for the Vikings.

I'm gonna take a closer look at this with my hand lens.

♪♪

This is granite.

Looks like some quartz,

micas, and organics built up on the surface.

They're also starting to build up again within the lines,

so this has been here a while.

As far as how old it is, you know, 1,000 to 1,500 --

this petroglyph could prove

that the Vikings did come to the Southwest,

and if that all pans out,

we're talking about a huge historical rewrite.

♪♪

WOLTER: Back in Minneapolis, it's time to give Harry Atkins a call.

Delivering good news is the best part of my job,

but it doesn't happen all the time.

The reality is, it's rare for authentic ancient artifacts

to be found in this country that aren't Native American.

I can't wait to tell Harry

what he and Bonnie have their hands on.

♪♪

Hey, Harry. How you doing?

I'm doing good, sir.

Are you ready for the results?

I am. I'm more than ready.

I'm excited to hear what you have to say.

I had been looking for almost 20 years

for real Viking artifacts that were found here

in the United States.

And guess what?

You have them!

Wow!

They are real.

They are genuine Viking artifacts,

and I don't know if I'm more excited than you.

I think it might be me.

But let's ask the question

that everybody's gonna ask, right?

How did they get there?

Exactly.

Now, the possibilities, realistically, are two.

The first is that we had an immigrant from Scandinavia

that brought these artifacts with them,

but let's take a look at it from the other possibility.

What if it was Vikings that brought these artifacts

that they collected and then brought them over here.

Right.

Probably the most compelling evidence -- down in Baja,

I saw a petroglyph, and in my opinion,

it looked like a Viking ship.

Wow.

There is a Native American legend with the Seri tribe

that is right there near where this petroglyph

was that talks about a ship that had blond-haired,

blue-eyed people that was sailing to the north,

and this fits in perfect with the thesis that we have

that the Vikings could have made it across the Northwest Passage,

came around Alaska, the West Coast around Baja,

up the Gulf of California into the Salton Sea,

and then maybe just a little bit beyond to Sedona.

[ Laughs ] Oh, I'm excited. That's really cool to hear.

You got to be thinking about your dad.

I mean, what would he say

if he could be part of this conversation?

He would say this is, you know, this is so cool that,

you know, these items were found.

They're brought here.

You followed where they came from,

but not only that, it adds a new possibility, or page,

to what is given history, so to speak.

It may have taken a while.

Unfortunately, he didn't live to see it,

but there's a part of me that thinks he's watching this,

and he knows.

Me too. Me too.

♪♪

WOLTER: The quest for the truth in this case

has been a Viking saga of the modern age.

There's no question Bonnie and Harry

have authentic Viking artifacts over 1,000 years old,

and whether they were brought here on a ship

in 1,000 A.D.

or found their way here some other way,

this is a fantastic story no matter what.

In ancient history, the legend of the Vikings loom large,

but I think their real journeys are even more amazing

and are adventures we're only beginning to understand.

If you have a mysterious artifact

or site I need to see, I want to know about it.

Go to travelchannel.com /americaunearthed.