Did a pirate hide the treasures of Oak Island on Easter Island - even the Ark of the Covenant? 
And were Vikings from Norway in the picture?
The Ark of the Covenant is said to have been a wooden chest covered with pure gold, which contained the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments. It was last seen in Jerusalem in 587 BC - after that it disappeared without a trace. Could Norwegian Vikings and the Knights Templars have had something to do with this? And did the ark come to Easter Island with the English pirate Edward Davis and was hidden there?

Click pictures for info.

Oak Island

Marty og Rick Lagina

Restored Norwegian house Nova Scotia

Meadows and Oak Island

Axe-head Oak Island

Viking with battle-axe

The Ark of the Covenant and tablets

King Salomon's temple

Petter Amundsen

Sigurd Jorsalfar and brother

The Vikings sailed far

Old road Oak Island

Captain Kidd

Cave on Easter Island

Matty Blake on Oak Island

The American TV-series "The Curse of Oak Island" is shown all over the world. The program is about an island in the province of Nova Scotia on the east coast of Canada. It is only 1.6 km long and 0.8 km wide, but on this small island one wonders if there are - or were - objects of enormous value hidden there.
Rick og Marty Lagina
In the series, it is the brothers Rick and Marty Lagina who try to find a solution to the mystery. Although they have found ancient objects that do not belong to the island's history, they have not found anything that proves that a huge treasure is hidden there. The brothers and other treasure hunters have drilled down to around 40 meters deep to find a room where the valuables are supposed to be hidden, but the room has not been found. Only pieces of human bone and wood have been brought up.
Ship in the mud
One also wonders if parts of the treasure could be buried in what is believed to be an artificial pond on the island. Sonar testing has shown what looks like a ship in the mud at the bottom. Some think that it could be a Spanish galeas, but could it be a Viking ship? What is believed to be the remains of a ship's rail has also been found, and this piece of wood has been dated to be from 660 to 770 AD.
Vikings
It is strange that Vikings have not been in the picture. Norwegian Vikings settled in Nova Scotia a thousand years ago. Analyzes of wood belonging to the Vikings who settled there are dated to 1021. Yes, we now know for sure that Norwegians came to North America at least 500 years before Christopher Columbus, who reached the West Indies in 1492. Norwegian Helge Ingstad and his wife Anne Stine was the first to carry out excavations which showed that there had been a Norwegian settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows.
Repairing Viking ships
Today, some of the houses have been restored so that people can see what the settlement looked like. And testeing of wood has given given an exact date. One archaeologist believes that it was only a temporary residence for repairing Viking ships.
Hidden
L'Anse aux Meadows is not far from Oak Island, so Norwegian Vikings may have been to Oak Island! We do not know if the Vikings also were looking for - and perhaps found - the enormous treasure that is supposed to be hidden on Oak Island. Brothers Rick and Marty haven't figured this out - of found it - yet.
Battle ax
The head of an old ax has been found in the swamp - and it could certainly have been the remains of a battle ax used by the Vikings. Yes, they also found a straight, round piece of wood that could very well have been the long handle that such axes had! Well, even if the ship that seems to be hiding in the swamp turns out to be a Spanish galeas, Norwegian Vikings could have been the crew!
Holy Grail
Petter Amundsen from Norway played a central role in one of the earlier episodes. He believed that the swamp may hide objects that have stood in the first temple in Jerusalem. He mentions the seven-armed candlestick, the showbread table and the silver trumpets that were stolen by the Roman emperor Titus. Plus the Holy Grail - the cup that Jesus and the disciples drank from during the Last Supper. Yes, one theory is that the Ark of the Covenant itself should have been transported to Oak Island.
The Ark of the Covenant
The Ark of the Covenant is the gold-plated wooden chest that is said to have contained the two stone tablets with the Ten Commandments that Moses received from God on Mount Sinai. The Ark of the Covenant was hidden in the innermost room of King Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, but disappeared at some unknown time in history. Some believe that the Ark of the Covenant was rescued by the Knights Templars and transported to the British Isles. The Knights Templar was originally a Catholic order, created by the Pope in 1128 to protect the pilgrims that crusaded to Jerusalem.
Shakespeare
Since remnants of parchment have also been found, Amundsen believes there may have been manuscripts that belonged to the Order of the Rosary, as well as original manuscripts by William Shakespeare on the island.
On Facebook, Amundsen writes to me: "I don't think the Vikings have been involved in this project, at least I haven't seen anything that could indicate that."
Well, Norwegian Vikings may actually have been in the picture when it comes to the origin of the pieces of parchment and other objects, - if you take the old Norwegian royal sagas into account.
Sigurd Jorsalfar
Sigurd I Magnussson was Norwegian king from 1103 to 1130. He was the first European king to go on a crusade/pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He was nicknamed Jorsalfar because he went to Jorsal, as Jerusalem was called at that time. He sailed with a fleet of 60 longships and 6,000 men to Jerusalem in what is today Israel. Sigurd is said to have robbed large valuables there, including silver and gold, together with the local king Baldvin. He is also said to have received a piece of the cross on which Jesus was crucified. One can only speculate whether he actually also took the Ark of the Covenant with him!
The sea way
It is said that Sigurd were traveling over land back to Norway, but the ships must have taken the sea route home. So one can wonder whether one or more of the ships may have ended up on Oak Island. Stone jetties have been found under the water outside the island, from a time when the sea was not as high as it is now. Plus old stone roads which indicate that there has been quite a lot of transport of one or the other to or from the island.
Silver
Yes, they have also examined the water in several of the boreholes on the island and found that there must have been large amounts of silver. Silver was often the Vikings' form of payment - and they had a lot of it! Whether there has also been gold is not shown by such investigations since gold does not dissolve in water.
The pirate
One theory is that the treasures are no longer there, but that they were found by the pirate Captain Kidd. William Kidd was a Scottish captain who turned to piracy, for which he was hanged in 1701. Well, since he did not have, or had sold, items that may have come from Oak Island, it is doubtful whether he was the one to find the treasures.
Edvard Davis
Another pirate who may be relevant is Edward Davis. He was a pirate who primarily operated in the Caribbean, but he also ravaged the Pacific and robbed gold and silver from Spanish possessions down the west coast of South America. Yes, it could be that he found Easter Island and had hidden quantities of gold and silver in a cave there. Whether he had also found his way to Oak Island is of course an unanswered question, but he had established himself in his early years as an active pirate together with a number of other pirates and was sailing on a number of ships in many areas. He had made it overland from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean at Panama, and one have to wonder how he managed to do that with the big ships. There are those who believe that the Vikings also managed to get to the Pacific via Panama, by rowing their ships over land!
Matty Blake
It is quite incredible if Norwegian Vikings could have dominated their time period more than we have learned, and in so many places in the world. But the seas were the best transport routes in the old days, and the Vikings were experts in building ocean-going ships and knew how to navigate by sun and moon. They were primarily not the brutal conquerors many believe, but traders. Whether they traded or transported objects from Oak Island we do not yet know.
     I have tipped Matty Blake who is a director of the programs "The Curse of Oak Island" that the Vikings may have played a role in what happened there, but so far have not received any response from him. So we'll have to wait and see!

By
Terje Dahl

(April 2023)