Across the Fence 391w (Westby Times Syttende Mai extra)
King Arthur has been stirring up a hornet’s nest this week. His wife gave him a book for his birthday about the Kensington Runestone, so he’s been filling the rest of the coffee gang in each morning on what he read the night before. There’s nothing like a story about a bunch of Norwegians and Swedes exploring America 130 years before Columbus and his gang missed the main land, and landed in the West Indies. As Arvid said, “If those Italians had used a Norwegian map of America, they’d a knowed where they was headed!”
I guess I better fill you in on a little history of this Kensington Runestone and bring you up to speed before we go over and join the group to see what they’re arguing about today.
In the fall of 1898, a Swedish farmer, Olaf Ohman, living near Alexandria, Minnesota, found a large flat stone imbedded in the roots of an Aspen tree he was grubbing out. His son noticed strange carvings on it. The stone was taken to the farm home where it was cleaned and washed. They were then able to see a long inscription on the face of the stone, and also along one the edge. The stone, a native rock called graywacke, measures 31 inches long, 16 inches wide, and 6 inches thick. It weighs 202 pounds.
A Norwegian neighbor, Nils Flaten, was asked to examine the stone, but was also unable to decipher the inscriptions. After a few days, Ohman took it to Kensington where it was placed in a bank. The find was announced and given to newspapers early in the year 1899. It was soon determined that the symbols on the stone were of runic origin, and quickly translated into Swedish, Norwegian, and English.
The stone at once aroused a great deal of controversy as to its authenticity. Several professors at Scandinavian and American universities claimed that the stone was a forgery after studying the inscriptions. Consequently, little attention was paid to the stone and it was soon returned to farmer Ohman who used it as a doorstep for many years, before it was rediscovered.
H.R. Holand of Wisconsin, a well known Norwegian scholar and historian, became interested and secured possession of the stone from Mr. Ohman. Holand devoted many years of research to establish the authenticity of the Runestone. His translation is now accepted both here and abroad and reads as follows:
“8 Goths (Swedes) and 22 Norwegians on an exploration journey from Vinland over the West. We had camp by 2 skerries one days journey north from this stone. We were out and fished one day. After we came home we found 10 men red with blood and dead. AVM (Ave Maria) Save us from evil.”
The following lines appear on the edge of the stone:
“Have 10 of our party by the sea to look after our ships, 14 days journey from this island. Year 1362.”
After considerable exploration, the lake with the skerries (rocky islands) referred to on the stone was identified as Cormorant Lake in Becker County, Minnesota. At Cormorant Lake are three large boulders with triangular drilled holes. It’s claimed that this was done for the purposes of mooring boats in the same way as it was done along the coast of Norway in the 14th century. The rocks on Cormorant Lake have become known as the “Anchor Rocks” or “Mooring Rocks.” Similar “mooring” rocks were discovered by H.R. Holand near where the stone was found.
The “sea” referred to as the place where the ships were left, has been identified as Hudson Bay. To reach Cormorant Lake, the party came down the Nelson River to Lake Winnipeg, then the Red River of the North, and then to Cormorant Lake.
A Scandinavian firesteel of the 14th century was found in the vicinity of the route the party took to reach Kensington, MN, the place where the Runestone was found. In later years, a broadaxe and other 14th century Scandinavian items have been found along the route it is thought they traveled.
So that brings you up to speed on what the boys have been discussing and arguing about this week. Now needless to say, with most of the gang having Norwegian roots, they pretty much all agree that the stone is for real. They just can’t understand how those Norwegians could allow eight Swedes to go along on their trip!
Let’s go on over to the round table and see what King Arthur is telling the boys today. By the way, King Arthur isn’t a king as you may have guessed. He’s Art Olson, but he’s pretty much the undisputed leader of the morning breakfast gang.
“Hey pull up a chair and sit yourself down,”King Arthur said. “I was just tellin’ the boys about the White Buffalo Woman and the Sacred Pipe.”
Elmer Storbakken, spat a chew of tobacco into an empty can he carried with him every place he went. “Ya, first he wants us to believe a bunch of Norwegians would go exploring with some Swedes, and now he tells us that the Injuns thought the White Buffalo Woman was with em’ too. Not only that, but they had some Catlic monks with em’ on this trip. Bunch a’ bullshit. Everyone knows there weren’t nothin’ but Luterns in Norway.”
“Now don’t go takin’ off again, before you hitch up the wagon,” said King Arthur. “You always go makin’ conclusions before you get the whole story. I’m gettin’ to that part.”
“I still say no self respecting Norwegian Lutern would go associatin’ with a bunch of Swedes and Catlics!” Elmer shot back.
“Just shut up and let me tell my story. Maybe you’ll learn something if you opened your mind instead of your mouth all the time. Now let me back up a step and tell our new arrivals where we were. In Black Elk Speaks, he tells of a visit to his people by the White Buffalo Woman, who presented them with a Sacred Pipe. He said that this event took place in what has been determined from oral tribal history to be in the 14th century. The sacred pipe has had nineteen caretakers since it was presented. Given an average of about thirty years per caretaker, that puts the origin of the pipe within a few years of 1362. According to Dakota oral history many of their beliefs and how they practiced those beliefs also changed about that same time.
Now according to recent research, they think a Norwegian knight named Paul Knutson led an ill-fated band of forty armored soldier-missionaries to the headwaters of the Red River in West Central Minnesota l30 years before the first voyage of Columbus. Evidence of such an expedition, accumulated through half a century, is now so substantial that some of this country’s foremost archaeologists consider the case nearly proven and the Kensington Runestone is now called “the most important archaeological object yet found in North America.”
Late in the autumn of 1354, King Magnus Erikson, first ruler of the combined realms of Norway and Sweden, commissioned Knutson, a “law speaker” (or judge) and one of the most prominent men of his court, to recruit an expedition to rescue the souls of a vanished Norwegian colony on the west coast of Greenland and also to seek out any lost souls in Vinland. Presumably the party sailed early the next spring. It was never heard from again.
So, a few years before the date found on the Kensington Stone, Paul Knutson, led an expedition across the Atlantic. Certainly no hoaxer of the nineteenth century could have known this. The date on the stone, eight years after the issuance of the order, would have been a big coincidence with history. Eight years would have allowed Knutson to have put the expedition together, sail from Bergen, explore Greenland, search for the Vinland colonies, and sail to the headwaters of the Red River in Minnesota.
There can hardly be any question that the crusade left Norway. Mr. Holand in his writings, ventures a reconstruction of what happened. Presumably, Knutson, guided by vague descriptions in the Icelandic sagas, proceeded to some point on the New England coast, established a base camp, and made a systematic search for the lost colony. Failing to find any trace of the Greenlanders, he must have turned northward with a considerable number of his party, perhaps leaving a small rear guard in what is now Massachusetts or Rhode Island, and finally sailed into the iceberg-filled Hudson Bay. Still there was no trace of the men he sought. And very likely his instructions from King Magnus had been quite explicit: If you don’t find them you needn’t come back.
He came to the mouth of the great Nelson River, followed it southward to Lake Winnipeg, and then followed a series of lakes and portages to the Red River country, whose waters flow into the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico. Even today there is an almost continuous waterway from the ice-filled sea to the Minnesota lake land where the Kensington Stone was found. This, the explorer probably thought, would have been a natural route from Greenland for the lost colonists. Also, Holand figures, Knutson thought he was following the easiest route back to his base in Vinland. He did not picture North America as a continent but as a group of large islands.
This, of course, is all highly speculative. But one fact remains: If the Kensington Stone is genuine, Paul Knutson and his crusading knights were in Central Minnesota in 1362. Evidence increases for the authenticity of the relic. If Farmer Ohman told the truth about the circumstances of the stone’s discovery, and this hard working, unlettered immigrant must have been leading an extraordinary sort of double life if he concocted the story. The tablet had been in the spot where he found it for at least as long as the aspen tree had been growing. Archaeologists have a reasonably accurate means of dating trees and timbers from the rings in the wood; examination of similar trees in the neighborhood has led to the conservative assumption that the tree in whose roots the rune stone was found was at least forty years old in 1898. This means that, if the relic had been “planted,” the attempted deception must have taken place in the 1850’s. There were then few white men in that part of Minnesota. It was inhabited by savage and hostile Sioux.”
Enough about all that,” Elmer said. “Tell em’ the buffalo part.”
“OK, OK, I’m just trying to give them some background on how these guys ended up in Minnesota.”
“Everyone knows how they ended up in Minnesota,” Arvid interrupted.
“What do you know about this story?” Kenny Tollakson asked.
“I’ll tell you,” said Arvid, as he leaned back in his chair. “It seems that, centuries ago, many Norwegians came to Ireland to escape the bitterness of Norwegian winters. Ireland was having a famine, and food was scarce. The Norse were eating most of the fish caught in the area, leaving the Irish with nothing but potatoes. St. Patrick, taking matters into his own hands, decided the Norwegians had to go. Secretly, he organized members of the Irathicans (Irish) Republican Army to rid Ireland of the Norsemen. The Irathicans sabotaged all power plants in the hope that fish in the Norwegians refrigerators would spoil, forcing the invaders to a colder climate where the fish would keep. They spoiled, as expected, but the Norwegians thrived on the spoiled fish. They still do to this day. Faced with failure, the Irishmen sneaked into the Norse fish-storage house during the night and sprinkled the rotten fish with lye, hoping to poison the intruders. But, they only introduced lutefisk to the Norwegians, who still thrive on the lye-soaked smelly fish. Matters became even worse for the Irish when the Norse started taking over the potato crop and making it into lefse. St. Patrick was at his wit’s end. Finally, on March 17, he blew his cork and told the Norwegians to go to hell. It worked. They all packed up, left Ireland, and moved to Minnesota!”
Arvid laughed at his own joke, as those around the table mostly groaned. “What’s the matter, don’t you guys have a sense of humor?” Arvid asked.
“I like a good joke as well as anyone,” King Arthur said, “But I’m trying to tell a serious story here. Now if you’re done, I’ll continue!”
“Don’t let me stop you,” said Arvid, raising the empty coffee pot for Lucy to see. She brought a full pot to the table as King Arthur continued his story.
“The part I was getting to, is that when the Norwegians arrived in Dakota Indian Country, they were the first white men they had seen. With their bushy, bearded faces with long hair, the Dakota thought they looked like white buffalo. Back in the 1300’s the Catholic Church was the church in Scandinavia. Elmer, if you went to that Lutheran church you belong to once in a while, you’d know the Lutheran religion didn’t even exist back in the 1300’s. All them Norwegians and Swedes were ‘Catlics’ as you call em’. Anyway, they would have had some Catholic monks with them if they were on a mission to Christianize the Greenlanders and Vinlanders. They always carried a large “white” statue of the Virgin Mary with them. This is what the historians think the Dakota referred to as the White Buffalo Woman in their history. The Sacred Pipe was presented to the Dakotas on behalf of this woman. Their history says that the White Buffalo woman said, ‘I do not wish to have any trouble with you, because I am on a mission from God.’
It’s believed the Norse party then carved a pipe and presented it to the Dakotas as a symbol of peace. That pipe is still in their possession and has a different design and shape than the traditional Indian pipes used during that time.
They also looked at the rune stone as being a sacred item having been made by these White Buffalo Men who came with the sacred White Buffalo Woman. They were not familiar with writing, and when the Norse carved the message in the stone, they read what it said to the Dakotas. The Dakotas thought it was the stone talking, just as they thought it was the Virgin Mary’s statue talking when the Norse let it be known to them that the pipe was given as a gift by the Virgin Mary.
It’s believed that the Norse party lived among the Dakotas for at least a year or more, trying to teach them many of their Christian beliefs.”
“Well, that’s all fine and dandy,” Elmer interrupted. “But how did those Injuns know what those Norwegians and Swedes were talking about? I can’t even understand what you’re talkin’ about most of the time.”
“Well, how the hell should I know how they communicated. Maybe they did it telepathically. I wasn’t there, so how should I know!”
“If you don’t know how they communicated with each other, how the hell do you know all this other stuff is nothin’ more than a bunch of bull!”
Now that got another argument going, so I think it’s about time we leave before things get too wild. Guess if we want to know more about that or how they communicated we’ll just have to study up on the subject. Anyway, it’s a fascinating story, and it appears the stone is for real. Maybe just maybe, there’s some truth to those stories about there being an Ole Redcloud!
You come back and see us again real soon. Maybe we’ll have an answer to that communication problem. Though I doubt it. Those boys at the round table have been having communication problems for years!
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