The
Kensington Rune Stone
A
Minnesota Mystery Solved?
By Stephen
J. Martin
Even the establishment now admits
that Leif Eriksson and other Vikings reached at least as far as what is now
Canada and made settlements there. But controversy continues to surround claims
that the Vikings penetrated to Minnesota, perhaps by way of Hudson Bay. The
main evidence that they may have done so is the Kensington Rune Stone (KRS).
But the stone has been widely pooh-poohed. Is it real or is it a fake? Is the
famous and oft-debated artifact a legitimate historical record of the travels
of Scandinavian adventurers into the heartland of America in the mid-14th
century? Some new developments, according to the author, have “proved
conclusively to all but the most stodgy establishmentarian academics the
absolute legitimacy of the KRS.”
Recent advances in the understanding of the
Kensington Rune Stone consist of a conclusive paper on the linguistic aspects
of the runes and the words used by the carver and an equally irrefutable study
of the geological aspects of the stone itself. Less has occurred recently
within the third milieu, that of historical documentation from elsewhere—yet,
nothing has been found to challenge the spectacular advances within the past
few months in the century-old effort to exonerate the KRS from the hasty and
ill-informed initial opinions of skeptics. Perhaps the most impressive
indicator of the importance of recent advances has been the almost total
silence from the KRS’s nay-sayers. In the past, claims by proponents of the
stone’s legitimacy were almost always countered, often very quickly, by an army
of court historians desperate to prop up their ill-conceived and erroneous
notions of the progression of New World exploration and settlement by
Europeans.
The linguistic advances have come in the form of
an exhaustive 74-page article by Dr. Richard Neilsen in the journal Scandinavian
Studies (spring 2001). This paper annihilates all of the linguistic
objections made against the KRS on the basis of supposedly modern grammar and
word forms found within the inscription. It also answers all of the previous
complaints directed toward some of the rune forms utilized throughout the
74-word message as being unavailable in the 14th century. Dr. Neilsen has a
broad résumé of both academic achievement and life experience (as opposed to
purely academic insularity and narrow-mindedness), which establishes his
ability to speak authoritatively on the linguistic aspects of the stone. He
began his career after graduation from the Coast Guard Academy as a member of a
1957 circumnavigation of the Arctic Ocean in search of a deep water channel. He
earned an M.S.E. in ship design from the University of Michigan in 1961, and an
M.S. in mathematics from that same institution in 1964. He earned a doctorate
of technology from the University of Denmark in Copenhagen in 1965.
He became fluent in Danish and began a nearly
40-year infatuation with Scandinavian cultures and languages. He then went into
the oil exploration business, which took him to 150 countries, where he became
conversant in many languages. Returning to Scandinavia for various stints (Oslo
in 1978, Denmark in 1979-82 and again in 1983-85), he continued his study of
Scandinavian languages and became fluent in Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and
Icelandic. As an employee of the Bechtel Corporation back in the States
(1985-87), he continued to be sent back to the region three times per year and
kept his languages fresh by examining and studying various Scandinavian
artifacts and ancient writings in his spare time.
Early in his examination of the KRS, Dr. Neilsen
was able to eliminate the old objection to the KRS pertaining to the appearance
of an Arabic “10” in the inscription. This was just one of many usages that
scholars (beginning with Prof. O.J. Breda at the University of Minnesota in
18991) with their limited knowledge of forms available to 14th
century Scandinavian scholars and clerics had used to bolster their contention
that the inscription was a modern forgery. Dr. Neilsen pointed out many years
ago (and within two weeks of his first examination of the KRS) that the
medieval Scandinavians had translated a huge Arabic text on mathematics by the
14th century,2 a fact then unknown to detractors. This piqued
Neilsen’s interest in the KRS controversy and initiated a decade-long study of
the stone and its fascinating message.
In his previously mentioned paper, Neilsen takes
all of the other criticisms and devastates them by showing in detail how each
of the supposedly modern forms appear in ancient writings that predate the KRS
elsewhere across Scandinavia. Many of these sources were also apparently
unknown to, or at least never utilized by, the critics. While a complete
summary of his masterful silencing of the critics is beyond the scope of this
paper (interested parties may view and download the entire article by visiting
www.byu.edu/ sasslink—choose “minimum graphics,” choose “Scandinavian studies,”
choose “supplemental materials”), a couple of ex amples will suffice.
One of the major criticisms of the KRS inscription
prior to the Neilsen article had been the supposed appearance of the word “opdagelse”
(a word meaning “discovery”) that critics have always said did not appear in
the Scandinavian lexicon until many decades after the 1362 date in the KRS
inscription. Neilsen points out in his paper that the correct translation ought
to have been “opthagelse,” meaning “acquisition.” The problem lay once
again with early 20th-century limitations in the understanding of medieval rune
forms. The rune for “th” had been incorrectly translated “d” for decades.
Neilsen’s most up-to-date translation, as provided by the curator of the Rune
Stone Museum in Alexandria, Minnesota,3 now reads:
Eight Goths and 202 Northmen are on acquisition
business from Vinland far to the west. We had encampment by two shelters one
day’s time north from this stone we were fishing one day. After we came home I
found 10 men red from blood and dead (death). Hail Mary deliver from evil. I
have 10 men by the sea to attend to our ship 14 days’ journey from this wealth.
Year of Christ 1362.
The next example consists of the strenuous
objections regarding the appearance of double dots throughout the text of the
inscription. Critics smugly pointed out that the Germanic umlaut did not come
into usage until well after 1362. Dr. Neilsen shows4 that these are
properly understood as word break markers used to signify where one word ends
and another begins. The article contains many startling and exciting
discoveries of this type. In short, Neilsen’s work eliminates any objection
from a linguistic perspective to the inscription being precisely what it
purports to be—a frantic record of a besieged party of Scandinavians in the
center of the North American continent 130 years before Columbus.
Other developments within the field of
geology—when combined with Dr. Neilsen’s thus far unchallenged linguistic
work—serve as the second of back-to-back homers in the bottom of the ninth
(after being down one) for supporters of the KRS’s legitimacy. Scott Wolter of
American Petrographic Services got his degree in geology from the University of
Minnesota-Duluth in 1982. In 1990, he founded a company that specializes in
material forensics. Engineers, architects and municipalities are the chief
customers of the firm, which has done extensive microscopic examination of the
stone and begun the process of chemical analysis which should have been started
decades ago. The majority of geologists who have examined the KRS over the
years have either gone on record in favor of its authenticity or adopted a
wait-and-see attitude. This is in stark contrast to the linguistic academicians
who have merely echoed, for the most part, the initial errant conclusions of
their forebears up to the present.
Twelve years after Olaf Ohman found the stone
entangled beneath the tree roots of a 40- to 70-year-old poplar at his farm in
Kensington, Minnesota, the Midwest’s most prominent geologist, Prof. N.H.
Winchell, put his signature to a document of a committee put together by the
Minnesota Historical Society for the purpose of examining the stone. The
report, dated April 21, 1910, reads:
Resolved, that this committee renders a
favorable opinion of the authenticity of the Kensington Rune Stone, provided,
that the references to Scandinavian literature given in this committee’s report
and accompanying papers be verified by a competent specialist in the
Scandinavian languages. . . .5
Given that Dr. Neilsen has, 91 years later,
finally provided the answer to the committee’s caveat, it remains only to echo
and expand earlier geological opinions with state-of-the-art examination
techniques. Before doing so, two more quotes from the same era as Winchell’s
committee serve to set the tone for understanding the geologic community’s
response to the KRS to date. Prof. W.O. Hotchkiss, then state geologist of
Wisconsin, wrote (also in 1910) the following:
I have carefully examined the various phases of
weathering on the Kensington Stone, and with all respect for the opinions of
philologists, I am persuaded that the inscription could not have been made in
recent years. It must have been made at least 50 to 100 years ago and perhaps
earlier.6
This statement is extremely important in light of
the fact that the first white settlers from Scandinavia (the most frequent
targets of the forgery theorists) did not settle in that part of Minnesota
until much after 50 years prior to the stone’s discovery in the fall of 1898.
The geologists’ qualification of their statements
is un der standable in light of the well-written (though now thoroughly moot)
objections of skeptics. It took just as much courage to overrule the considered
opinions of a phalanx of linguistic Ph.D.s in 1910 as it does for heroes like
Neilsen and Wolter to do so today. After all, reputations built over many years
are not easily gambled in the court of established academic opinion, given the
well-known resistance to new discoveries which may challenge outdated notions.
Another early examination of the stone was
undertaken by Dr. Warren Upham, an eminent glacial geologist. In 1910 he wrote:
When we compare the excellent preservation of
the glacial scratches, shown on the back of the stone, which were made several
thousand years ago, with the mellow, time-worn appearance of the face of the
inscription, the conclusion is inevitable that this inscription must have been
carved hundreds of years ago.7
Such is the tenor of the opinions of the early
20th-century geologists who examined the KRS.
This author knows of no eminent geologist who has
published any documentation of a viewpoint critical of Winchell, Hotchkiss and
Upham within the last 90 years. Most geologists have simply refused to study
the KRS as a result of the widely held and widely publicized negative opinions
of the philologists. Enter Scott Wolter and American Petro graphics. The
results of geological analysis of the stone ought to be given far more weight
in the discussion than any of the linguistic arguments, either pro or con. If
the inscription can be proved to have been written prior to the 1830s—when the
first white explorers of the modern era began to traverse central Minnesota on
their way to points further west—it makes no difference whether Olaf Ohman had
a book with some runes in it inside his farmhouse, or that papers about
Scandinavian explorations to America predating Columbus may have been available
to the Scandinavian settlers of Douglas County, Minnesota. It also matters not
how numerous and well devised the arguments in favor of a possible forger put
forth by detractors such as Erik Wahlgren in his The Kensington Stone: A
Mystery Solved (University of Wisconsin Press, 1958) might be. Unless
Wahlgren, and others. would argue that the American Indians had obtained an
in-depth knowledge of medieval Norse by some divine revelation, the KRS could
only have been made by just the type of people mentioned in the translation of
the inscription.
Scott Wolter was asked by Luann Patten of the Rune
Stone Museum in July of 2000 to conduct forensic analysis of the KRS in keeping
with standard scientific procedure. Scott Wolter told this writer in an
interview by telephone that he had never heard of the KRS prior to this request,
and entered the project with no preconceptions either for or against its
authenticity.
The 30-page APS report concludes with these words:
It is clear that the manmade surface types on
the KRS exhibit weathering (primarily mica degradation) consistent with being
buried in the ground for at least decades and probably centuries. This being
the case, the logical conclusion is that the KRS is an authentic artifact,
presumably made at the time it is dated.
Wolter says that his observations are conclusive,
with regard to the above statements. However, he makes some suggestions for
further study which might be helpful in pinpointing the age of the inscriptions
with more accuracy. These suggestions include:
1) Tombstone studies to quantify the rate of
mica decomposition: Gravestones of incremental known ages (5, 10, 25, 50, 100,
200 years) should be sampled for analysis using SEM in order to generate a
timeline for mica degradation that could be used for dating the KRS
inscriptions.
2) Location studies with the goal of
identifying the bedrock source of the KRS graywacke: Samples taken from the
bedrock source would then be used in accelerated weather testing (to include an
autoclave and a freeze-thaw chamber). Chips should then be subjected to
reflected light microscopy and SEM.
3) The data achieved above (#2) should then be
analyzed with the intent of projecting a mica-degradation timeline and a
weathering time line to be compared with the results from suggestion #1.
4) A thorough microscopic digital photo library
of the entire inscription should be produced under various magnifications.
5) A qualified plant specialist should be
consulted to examine the chemical processes and timing involved to develop the
root bleaching observed on the back side of the KRS.
It appears that Olaf Ohman, his descendants and
the early defenders of the stone—such as Hjalmar Holand (who purchased the
stone from Ohman and wrote several books on the subject) and Prof. Robert Hall,
whose classic work The Kensington Rune Stone Is Genuine (Columbia:
Hornbeam Press, 1982) anticipated Neilsen—have finally been fully vindicated.
The Ohman family, to the fourth generation, still bears the onus of rebuke from
dozens of neighbors and academic skeptics who now owe them a full apology for
their crass and insensitive insinuations. Cognizant Americans should now put
the Kensington Rune Stone in the place it deserves in our nation’s history. The
little museum in Alexandria, Minn. now deserves to be on everyone’s travel
itinerary as much as does the Plymouth Rock.
For those interested in further reading on this
topic, Holand’s most interesting book (Westward from Vinland, New York:
Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1940), on a possible historical explanation for why
the Kensington Rune Stone carvers may have been in the American heartland in
1362, is a must. Interested individuals should also visit the web sites of
current researchers such as the Massey twins (Keith and Kevin), Michael Zalar
and Yuri Kuchinsky.
Footnotes:
1 Wahlgren,
17.
2 Neilsen,
interviewed by telephone, September 5, 2001.
3 Brochure
from Rune Stone Museum, Alexandria, Minn.
4 Neilsen,
6.
5 Holand,
105.
6 In ibid.,
130.
7 Ibid.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Holand, Hjalmar, Westward from Vinland: An Account
of Norse Discoveries and Explorations in America, 982-1362, New York:
Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1940.
Neilsen, Dr. Richard, “A Response to Dr. James
Knirk’s Essay on the Kensington Rune Stone,” in the spring 2001 edition of Scandinavian
Studies, Vol. 72, #1.
Wahlgren, Erik, The Kensington Stone: A Mystery
Solved, Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1958.
