{"id":613,"date":"2006-02-11T21:57:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-11T21:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=613"},"modified":"2006-02-11T21:57:00","modified_gmt":"2006-02-11T21:57:00","slug":"613","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=613","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Vinland 1<\/strong><\/p>\n

On November 8, 1898, a Norwegian immigrant farmer, Olaf Ohman, unearthed a large stone block covered with runic writing while cutting down a tree on his land–or so the story goes. Ohman lived about 145 miles northwest of Minneapolis. This “Kensington Runestone” was translated most recently as follows:<\/p>\n

We eight Goetalanders and twenty-two Northmen are on this acquisition expedition far west from Vinland. We had properties near two stone shelters one day’s march north from this stone. We went fishing one day. After we came home, I found ten men red with blood, dead. Ave Maria, save us from evil! I have ten men by the sea to look after our ships fourteen days’ travel from this site. Year of the Lord 1362.<\/em><\/p>\n

Archaeologists have generally regarded the stone as a fake. Recently, however, Fate<\/em> magazine hopefully announced “Kensington Runestone Proved Authentic<\/a>” in an article based on the release of a new book by a long-time advocate for the stone’s veracity.<\/p>\n

Let’s look, then, at the skeptics’ arguments first. Actually, there are two of them: the runes themselves and the suspicious timing of the discovery.<\/p>\n

1. The timing. In 1893, thousands attended the World Columbian Exposition<\/a> in Chicago, marking the four-hundredth (plus 1) anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ first trip to the Western Hemisphere.<\/p>\n

The fair’s Norwegian pavilion included a replica of the Gokstad ship<\/a>, a 10th-century ship found buried near Oslo in 1880. It’s easy to see a message there. Norway was still in a political union with Sweden (dissolved in 1905), but as did other European countries, had its own flourishing romantic nationalist movement. Replicating the Gokstad ship also made the statement, “We Norse were the first to sail the Atlantic.”<\/p>\n

The Norwegian explorer-scientist Fridtjof Nansen<\/a> was one of many to pore over the ancient Grænlendinga Saga<\/em> and Eirik’s Saga<\/em> with their descriptions of voyages to North America around the year 1000. But despite the sagas’ evidence (and that of some medieval maps), Norse exploration beyond Greenland was not officially accepted until an archaeological dig in Newfoundland led to undeniable evidence of at least one small settlement<\/a>–or seasonal work station, depending on the interpretation.<\/p>\n

Likewise, the skeptics continue, Ohman’s “discovery” of the runestone was part of a typical American tale of immigrants negotiating their place in the new society, a manifestation of “Norwegian pride” more than a genuine artifact. And how coincidental that it closely followed the Columbian Exposition! <\/p>\n

2. The skeptics’ second argument involves the runes themselves. Even in the 1890s, some Norwegians continued to use runic writing for short inscriptions, part of that “romantic nationalism,” perhaps. Ohman also had been trained as a stonemason and had come from an area of Norway (Hälsingland) where runes were used occasionally. <\/p>\n

Most of the experts who examined the stone, however, found reasons–too complicated to summarize here–to argue that the language and runes used, while Norse, did not fit with other examples from the 1300s. Their conclusion was that the Kensington Runestone was a clever fake, a prank, and “a memorial to the creativity of Scandinavian immigrants,” to quote the editors of Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

More to come. Meanwhile, here is a Kensington Runestone links page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tags: Kensington runestone<\/a>, Vinland<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vinland 1 On November 8, 1898, a Norwegian immigrant farmer, Olaf Ohman, unearthed a large stone block covered with runic writing while cutting down a tree on his land–or so the story goes. Ohman lived about 145 miles northwest of Minneapolis. This “Kensington Runestone” was translated most recently as follows: We eight Goetalanders and twenty-two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-613","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":615,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=615","url_meta":{"origin":613,"position":0},"title":"Vinland 2Part 1Fake or not,\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 14, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Vinland 2Part 1Fake or not, the Kensington Runestone was fervently defended by one Hjalmar Rued Holand, a local historian. His promotion resulted in a 1940 Smithsonian exhibition and later the creation of a museum in Alexandria, Minnesota.Nevertheless, expert opinion remained generally skeptical. The 1967 Newfoundland discovery seemed to obviate any\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":618,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=618","url_meta":{"origin":613,"position":1},"title":"Vinland 3","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 19, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Part 1 Part 2 From the skeptics' point of view, the acceptance of a Norse presence in North America, following the archaeological dig at L'Anse aux Meadows, should have made the Kensington Runestone a non-issue. \"No Kensington stone is needed to prove that the Scandinavians reached America first,\" wrote James\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":627,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=627","url_meta":{"origin":613,"position":2},"title":"From Vinland to \"Celtic America\"\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 3, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"From Vinland to \"Celtic America\" (Part 4)Part 1, Part 2, Part 3Reading of Richard Nielsen's championing of the Kensington Runestone, I was reminded of another independent scholar of marginal archaeology--another engineer, coincidentally--the late Bill McGlone of La Junta, Colorado.McGlone in turn had been influenced by Barry Fell (1917-1994), a marine\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2073,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2073","url_meta":{"origin":613,"position":3},"title":"‘Severed Ways’: Headbangers of 1007 CE","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 3, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A movie made by a company called Heathen Films is likely to have a certain ideological component. Severed Ways, a 2007 indie production, however, has not become a cult favorite like The Wicker Man. The plot comes right from the Vinland Sagas, but adds a bit about two scouts abandoned\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Canada\"","block_context":{"text":"Canada","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=canada"},"img":{"alt_text":"\"Severed Was\" poster image","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/severedways-202x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12490,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12490","url_meta":{"origin":613,"position":4},"title":"Who Benefited from the Vinland Map?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 27, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"The Vinland Map has been controversial since the 1960s when it popped into public view. Did it really record a Norse partial-mapping of North America? Its modern history is viewed as scandalous. Most scholars who examined it leaned toward its being a forgery. But from when? And for whose benefit?\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Canada\"","block_context":{"text":"Canada","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=canada"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/vinland_map_hires-300x208.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":633,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=633","url_meta":{"origin":613,"position":5},"title":"Watch this spaceFamily business is\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 15, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Watch this spaceFamily business is taking up a lot of my time, but I will be finishing the Vinland \/ Colorado Ogham series of posts soon.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}