{"id":618,"date":"2006-02-19T22:39:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-19T22:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=618"},"modified":"2011-06-06T11:56:35","modified_gmt":"2011-06-06T17:56:35","slug":"618","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=618","title":{"rendered":"Vinland 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part 1<\/a><\/p>\n

Part 2<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“No Kensington stone is needed to prove that the Scandinavians reached America first,” wrote James E. Knirk<\/a> of the University of Oslo, reviewing works by two Kensington supporters for the journal Scandinavian Studies<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the arcane arguments continue. In a lengthy rebuttal<\/a> (PDF) to Knirk and other skeptics, Richard Nielsen, the best-prepared of the stone’s defenders and author of the book mentioned earlier<\/a>, marshaled a long series of linguistic defenses for the Minnesota runes.<\/p>\n

He argued, with extensive citations, that they did represent “a faithful record of medieval Scandinavian speech” and that their dialect was unknown to the farmer Olof Ohman.<\/p>\n

The purported location of the stone’s discovery, west of Minneapolis, seems to make little sense in terms of a possible Norse journey up the St. Lawrence River, through the Great Lakes, and into Minnesota, but Nielsen has an explanation for that too.<\/p>\n

Writing in the Journal of the West<\/em><\/a>, Nielsen argues that the location makes more sense if, as he believes, the Norse launched trading trips into the interior of North America from Hudson’s Bay. Indians from the region (Santee Sioux, Mandans, and others) were known to have used a trading route that went down the Red River to Lake Winnepeg and then by other water routes to Hudson’s Bay. The Kensington site, he claims, lies on the portage between the Mississippi watershed and the Red River watershed.<\/p>\n

These claims, in turn, tie in the fascinating history of the Norse settlements in Greenland, which did endure for four centuries despite their stubborn insistence on not learning from the Dorset-culture Eskimos and on attempting to maintain a pastoral economy in the near-Arctic.<\/p>\n

Personally, I have no strong feelings about the Kensington Runestone’s authenticity, although I do suspect that there was more to the Norse exploration than just the L’Anse aux Meadows station<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Instead, Nielsen’s passionate “outsider” defense of the stone reminds me of another friend of mine, the late Bill McGlone, and his quixotic study of some Colorado stone inscriptions.<\/p>\n

More to come.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 E. Knirk of the University […]<\/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":[20,94,134,147],"class_list":["post-618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-archaeology","tag-canada","tag-norse","tag-vinland"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-618","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":613,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=613","url_meta":{"origin":618,"position":0},"title":"Vinland 1On November 8, 1898,\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 11, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Vinland 1On 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\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":615,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=615","url_meta":{"origin":618,"position":1},"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":627,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=627","url_meta":{"origin":618,"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":12490,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12490","url_meta":{"origin":618,"position":3},"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":1011,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1011","url_meta":{"origin":618,"position":4},"title":"What Lies Ahead","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 26, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Here are a couple of links. Meanwhile, expect a series of new book-related posts, now that spring semester is finally coming to a close.\u00b6 What was it like to live in a Norse longhouse in Vinland or Iceland? Re-enactors have ideas.\u00b6 At least Pope Benedict understands that religion thrives better\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":611,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=611","url_meta":{"origin":618,"position":5},"title":"Beer and VinlandI sat down\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 10, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Beer and VinlandI sat down last night with a plate of bread, King Oscar sardines and Rosenborg cheese, a couple of bottles of Carlsberg beer (Support Denmark!), and a copy of the Smithsonian's illustrated anthology Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga.It's all for inspiration: I am working up to a series\u2026","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\/618","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=618"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2740,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions\/2740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}